Meerkats for the win?

[WildGoose]

Just thought i'd share a few observations, had to renew the car insurance today, tedious as this has become, when you have several bikes, a car, a van.

We seem to have changed the way we do it, a few years ago, it was buy an autotrader and ring every individual company in the back, and it took hours and it was soul destroying, now we are using these stupid compare sites because it supposedly kills many birds with a single stone.

But now there are loads of compare sites, and they all talk nonsense. I'm quite lazy so I did the big 5 of them then gave up.

How long before there is a compare site for the compares sites run by direct.gov?

I used go-compare, confused, tesco compare, money supermarket and compare the market.

Confused was the cheapest of the lot until I did compare the market which came out the best quote being £100 cheaper than any of the others best offers, and over £160 cheaper from the same brokers (elephant and admiral seemed the worst for this). It makes no sense.

Some irritating things I noticed.
Confused.com doesnt allowed "_" (underscores) in your email address, which meant I couldnt use mine, which is probably a good thing, but just evidences some sloppy site design. Nor can you have double barrelled first names.

The biggest factor variable for price for me personally, seemed to be whether or not to protect no claims, this could alter the quote by £70 for some insurers. None of the other stuff they claim makes a difference does, like mileage, value i.e. all the logical things that would make more sense.

I fiddled around on all the sites trying to get them cheaper, I noted after about 15 minutes on confused and go compare, that you can break them totally, even by changing a single variable, getting a quote, then going and changing the variable back and getting a quote again. You might never be able to return to the best price, as it seemingly plucks random numbers from the air each time.

This is what happened with confused, I went from having a best quote of £408, fiddled around a bit, and couldnt get it back below £450 despite all variables being the same as when I started

So as we all know already, car insurance is a big corrupt pile of wang.

Just keep an eye on the cheapest quotes, and make sure you get the individual quote reference before fiddling around too much and re-submitting just in case the price magically disappears and never comes back.

In the end I got a £315 from admiral, through the meerkats. Which was £134 less than last year.

Simples.
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So in other words, he stopped you for being flagrantly in posession of a motorcycle in direct contravention of the Hippies, Darkies and People Whose Face I Don't Like The Look of (Police Powers) Act. 1976

[McGee]

Meerkats got me my insurance for £290 fully comped on my little sporting compared to the £700 tesco's wanted for the same thing.

Still ridiculous for a 1.1 and being 22 but oh well it will work.
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◙◙► K6 GSXR 600 ◄◙◙◙◙► K5 GSXR 1000 ◄◙◙◙◙► K5 GSXR 600 ◄◙◙◙◙► 96 RF600r ◄◙◙
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Its pronounced Jixxer!

[karoshi]

It's always worth doing your own checking around rather than relying on the experiences of others for insurance quotes i've found.

with mine recently, had footman-james recommended to me for classic bikes, they refused to quote me.

meercats site got close with £280 best option while other comparison sites couldn't get under £300, wheras ringing Bennets (saw the number on eurosport) got a 'best' quote of around £450

In the end for me, Carole Nash were the only company to get under £200

Still, the meercats adverts have to be my favourite ones on telly at the moment, they're one of the few adverts that actually makes me want to use the company/website they're promoting.. for comparing meercats it's the most useful website i've ever found
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Well, I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it. - Elwood P. Dowd

[Chriss]

When I worked for Saga, the sales people had targets, and the first X of a day, they would be really cheap. Once they hit the target, the price would rise to a more normal price again. Ergo, shop for your insurance in the morning.

Another, crazy, old school, thing to do, phone a local broker. Cheapest for me by far and I get other weird benefits too (windscreen cover and I'm only TPFT).
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TheShaggyDA: I've got 3 or 4 pairs that predate my wife, so at least 11.5 years old.

[st3v3]

My 2 local brokers were always much more costly than bigger companies.

I use GoCompare.com, always seem cheapest.

McGee, seicento? cost much?..