British Car Insurance

[boiltheocean]

Also, looking at your experience, you say one was done online and the other over the phone. Did he do the online quote through a comparison site? Because they can be out of date. How different was the quote?

Both quotes were produced using the exact same online form direct from the insurance company. All the guy on the phone did was go onto the public website and go through the same form as my dad did at home, yet the phone quote came in just over £100 more expensive.

 

[BigYoSpeck]

Both quotes were produced using the exact same online form direct from the insurance company. All the guy on the phone did was go onto the public website and go through the same form as my dad did at home, yet the phone quote came in just over £100 more expensive.

Well then that's because the quote was by phone minus any online offer. If you give the reference you get from the online quote to most insurers you get them same price.

 

[boiltheocean]

Well then that's because the quote was by phone minus any online offer. If you give the reference you get from the online quote to most insurers you get them same price.

There was no online offer, it was just a simple renewal. The guy on the phone couldn't work out why the two quotes were so different so he just said to ignore the one he gave.

 

[Jondot]

There was no online offer, it was just a simple renewal. The guy on the phone couldn't work out why the two quotes were so different so he just said to ignore the one he gave.

Again, don't forget that insurance tends not to have an exact price. Just because you type in the same details 24 hours later doesn't mean you'll get exactly the same price.

Think about it - when you fill in the quote details on say Admiral.com, the quote is saved with a unique reference. You've filled out the details and checked the price with the insurance company at a specific time, and because you've done that they've given you a specific price which is then saved for x amount of days (mine were valid for 2 months as I recall). If I then come along in 3 hours time and fill out the exact same details, I'm checking the price with the insurance company again at a completely different time than before, so in theory how much they've decided to charge you may well have changed - much in the same way that you could walk into Sainsbury's and find the price of baked beans has gone up over the last hour for no particular reason.

Of course that's assuming you've actually had the exact same details entered twice. The form for an insurance quote isn't exactly the speediest thing to fill out in the world, so it wouldn't be a completely ridiculous assumption to say that a teeny detail somewhere may well have been altered. Maybe your dad typed an average mileage of '10,000' on the website and then said '10-11,000' while chatting away on the phone, who knows - but it could well have affected the price.

 

[Sniffs]

The things made out of canoe material anyway so the only weight high up is the windscreen and your head, no real way of getting them lower. As for the tyre it has such a small engine it would struggle with rolling resistance from a larger surface contact plus with only one wheel guiding the front and next to no weight over it the last thing you need is a higher chance of aquaplaning

well, i figured the poor things are running on motorbike scale tyres (mabey they'd handle better?) what's on them?



Depending on your service it can be quite accurate. I'm on cable which only shows me to my nearest town about 7 miles away, but when I was on DSL it would show the exchange which was only a couple. That's still not what affects insurance though as you give your exact address getting the quote and that is used to calculate it.

I'm on DSL, and it still points to the nearest large-city server, due to our older infrastructure.

 

[BigYoSpeck]

There was no online offer, it was just a simple renewal. The guy on the phone couldn't work out why the two quotes were so different so he just said to ignore the one he gave.

Renewal? I'd say that when your dad went on line he got a new customer price but when he phoned up he got the renewal price. Renewal time is pretty much the only time that you can get an insurer to lower a quote these days, and then it's only to what they would offer to a new customer, they just hope people are too lazy to check the price.