Car Model: 1999 Mercedes SLK 230K Convertible, Petrol, Automatic, 2295cc
Confused.com was first. I understand that confused.com, part of the Admiral Group was the first and longest running car comparison site in the UK. Thus, on that basis it deserves my first review. On the home page, it mentions that my car quote will only take me 5 minutes, so I am going to time it accordingly and I hasten to say it took me 15. I did ensure that I had all my insurance details at hand so as I wasn’t wasting anytime hunting for the information. The home page has a very simple and easy to follow design with the most popular choices at the top and the rest were buried below, which is perfectly fine. I was also very impressed that this website valued my car which was extremely close to market values.
Occasionally though, throughout the process of this UK Car Insurance Price Comparisons, I stopped to check the details against my log book and they’ve got the engine size wrong and do not understand why they couldn’t match the DVLA data. Also, I’ve no idea where they obtained this information from as apparently, my car does not have a Thatcham car immobiliser.
I specifically agreed to a £250 excess and was not at all pleased when the quotes came through with the lowest being £362.10 with an excess of £400 written in very small print, almost illegible on my computer screen. I only noticed the figures when I actually printed out my quotes, so not happy about this at all. Why bother asking us about excess and then just blatantly ignoring it! It’s pointless and a waste of time to do a price comparison as I am going to other comparison websites and I need the quotations to be uniform?
Also, when I printed my quote prior to moving onto the next page, most of my answers were missing on the printed format. Finally, due to the millions of spam emails we all get these days I would have preferred to be asked outright at the very beginning if I wish to register, not half way through. I don’t like being forced down a particular route. What’s that all about? Lowest premium for full payment: £362, monthly payments £47.72
Once again, I timed myself for the quotation time which took around 10 minutes, I suppose it’s only fair to say the time flew by as I was immersed in concentration to ensure I was inputting all the correct information. I did like the Home Page which was simple and straightforward apart from my comment below regarding my dislikes.
Next up, gocompare.com. Yuk, I absolutely despise it when as soon as I enter a website I am being harassed already with their flyer pop-ups for “Never Miss a Great Deal”, as this sort of thing does instantly put me off. It’s like entering into someone’s home and they request for you to put on some plastic slippers so as not to deface their carpet, it’s an instant put off for me! Honestly, their GUI is sincerely silly as when you press the Car Insurance tab and you sit there waiting for something to happen and nothing does. Then, soon after you’ve worked out that you also have to press the “Get Quotes” button, this is ancient history type of GUI. The process flow was a tad disengaging from pages 2 to 4 and I felt a couple of questions were repetitive.
It’s a Kompressor and everyone knows it’s a 2 seater, not a 5 seater and not pleased that I had to amend that piece of data. Then, I scrolled all the way down to Swinton Insurance Company that offered me an unrealistic and ludicrous price of £2,444.97 with an excess of £550? 78 companies refused to give me a quote including the Post Office Insurance considering I was with for a number of years and was a Post Mistress too. Immediately, I can tell these quotes are either a cooked up generic figure and thus not accurate. I know for a fact, that I am an extremely low risk candidate for car insurance and the quotes that were offered to me felt as if, I was a twenty something. However the lowest quote I got was £370.80 (a LOT different from £2444.97!) with £35.31 the lowest monthly premium.
Then I tried tiger.co.uk. So far, this is my favourite home page against all the other comparison sites I’ve been on today as it’s clear, fresh and uncluttered. This is rather interesting, as this website too found a Thatcham Approved Category 1 Security Device on my car to which is news to me. The second page is crystal clear against a white background and the questions have been well thought out with a logical process flow. I really do like it very much and I’ve never heard of tiger.co.uk before until today.
I am impressed that it has a question about other driving qualifications such as Advanced Driving as I’ve learnt from other people that it can reduce your insurance premiums. I am also impressed that it stuck with my request to only use £250 excess against all the quotes offered as this makes it extremely easy for me to find the most competitive quote.
I received a total 40 quotes which is more than sufficient to enable me to review and compare all the other prices, the entire form filling took me just under 10 minutes.
Irritations? I found that I had to re-read this question about,”How many other cars are there in your household? (in addition to this one)”. Personally, it’s best to keep everything simple as most people do not like filling in forms, so something like “How many cars are there in this household?” would be far easier to comprehend.
Once again I got 29 rejected quotes, and it would be nice to know why I was rejected by these companies as that may help me in the future to be more vigilant and I’ve been told by my current insurance company that I am a low risk driver. Although, my cheapest quote came up quite high and that I am the sort of person that believes in quality of service and for the sake of a few extra pounds, I would still consider this company (which you won't allow me to name!!!). Lowest quote: £473.20 with £39.75 for 12 monthly payments.
And finally moneysupermarket.com; the site with the wierd TV ads.
I did like the Date of Birth option where you just type it in manually instead of the usual scroll down list, it’s a lot faster. I am also dazzled as a lot of their claims, convictions and insurance type questions have already got a prefix answer format using popular votes, so it saves me the burden of filling in every question. I am not sure if this may be an optical illusion or otherwise as this was the only comparison website that offered the form filling in only two parts.
I have to admit after experiencing www.tiger.co.uk, this www.moneysupermarket site looks old, cluttered and cumbersome. Is this question really necessary, “Do you know the registration number of the car?” Of course I do, I need an insurance quote and yes, I do know my registration number!
Gosh, they could not even give me the year of my car and quoted a year range of 1996 to 2004 and this immediately threw me off course as I am now suspicious about the accuracy of this quotation. As far as I can remember with all my past insurance companies, they always insisted on the exact year of my car. Furthermore, as I am IT Contractor and aware of trends, this website is almost 5 years out of date as it’s not using live data and the postcode look up format is old too.
They’ve got my seats wrong again, it’s a 2 seater not a 5. Why ask me about the £250 excess and not use it in my quotes and this is fundamentally very important to me, as this website makes it very difficult for me to get an accurate overall picture.
I received a total 44 quotes which is plenty void of rejected quotes and the whole thing took me just under 10 minutes, for my UK Car Insurance Price Comparisons exercise. Cheapest pay-in-full £364.48, cheapest monthly £30.37.
Who did I buy from? Tiger. Not the cheapest but I wasn't looking for that.
Babs Baker