Like a lot of people, I’m forever trying to do something to keep my motoring costs within reasonable limits, particularly my insurance. My wife and I have a car each, and for reasons that are lost in the annals of driving history, I tax and insure both of them – and there’s me on a pension ... Read review
Advantages: Simple one-stop approach to car insurance searches Disadvantages: Is it just a front for Admiral & Elephant
Like a lot of people, I’m forever trying to do something to keep my motoring costs within reasonable limits, particularly my insurance. My wife and I have a car each, and for reasons that are lost in the annals of driving history, I tax and insure both of them – and there’s me on a pension and she’s still in full time work – bummer!
It only struck me the other day, that in a few month’s time, once I’ve paid the mortgage off, my two ... ...both of which go up out of all proportion to inflation. This all makes a mockery of the security afforded by an index-linked pension, unless of course some kind soul keeps all other prices at below inflation rates (yeah right, dream on, Chris). Something needed to be done. Of course, getting her indoors to run her own bloody car would be a start!
Last year, and earlier this year saw us taking delivery of two new cars (oddly both funded ... more
Like a lot of people, I’m forever trying to do something to keep my motoring costs within reasonable limits, particularly my insurance. My wife and I have a car each, and for reasons that are lost in the annals of driving history, I tax and insure both of them – and there’s me on a pension and she’s still in full time work – bummer!
It only struck me the other day, that in a few month’s time, once I’ve paid the mortgage off, my two largest annual bills will be Council Tax and Car Insurance, both of which go up out of all proportion to inflation. This all makes a mockery of the security afforded by an index-linked pension, unless of course some kind soul keeps all other prices at below inflation rates (yeah right, dream on, Chris). Something needed to be done. Of course, getting her indoors to run her own bloody car would be a start!
Last year, and earlier this year saw us taking delivery of two new cars (oddly both funded by me again – am I doing something fundamentally wrong here, or what?).
In November last year, we got our hands on one of the first right-hand-drive Smarts, and in March this year, a Toyota Yaris T-Sport added itself to the Nibbles stables.
In the case of the Smart, my previous insurers wouldn’t touch it, because at that point they assumed that right-hand drive meant that it was an amateur modification. Hence I started from scratch with Allianz-Cornhill at a not-unreasonable £341/annum. The other car was taken over by Admiral for a fee (it being somewhat sportier than the Nissan Micra it replaced). Even so, I didn’t feel the £402/annum being charged was unreasonable given the London area postcode and GTi pretensions of the car.
Then whilst idly channel-surfing on Sky Digital the other night, I chanced upon a commercial for www.confused.com. Now there’s a name I could identify with!
USING THE SITE
So I gave it a whirl. The web site’s front page was merely an invite to new and existing customers to log in.
Then merely by inputting the registration number of the car to be insured, THEY tell YOU what car you have – annoyingly the Smart still showed up as Left Hand Drive so maybe even DVLA think it is too. You can however, also input your car details manually.
Extra screens come and go, asking all the usual details, age, postcode, number and identity of drivers, blah blah blah. In the same spirit as the automated car details screen, you only have to confirm your house number, having given them the postcode.
I know from what others have said, that this is all very well but if you live in a new road for instance, you might as well be on another planet until these people pay for the latest version of the postal database. However, I’m an old git, and I’ve lived here for years, so I can only take as I find.
One tip I’ve found works for me, is to have a serious think about how much voluntary excess you can afford. Why not bank a few hundred quid in a high interest account for a rainy day and offer to pay more towards any claim – you can still get the money back through your uninsured loss insurance if you’ve someone to claim against.
This says a lot about you, and seems to have a very salutary effect on the quote given, and is a good idea if you can afford it.
THE RESULTS
For some obscure reason, I requested a quote first for the T-Sport a few days ago, even though the renewal date wasn’t until Spring next year. This meant lying about the renewal date just to get the search engine on the move – for obvious reasons, they don’t like giving a quote with too many months life in it, given the turbulent conditions in the insurance market. However, within minutes, my e-mail box was “pinging” with details of the quote, and YES they would have been cheaper had I been renewing in the next couple of months. £120 cheaper to be exact.
Then I received a follow-up phone call from the firm selected. I honestly can’t remember who it was, because I was just tinkering and not about to do business. However, the principle is established, www.confused.com looks like it will be 10’s of £’s cheaper next year too. Pretty impressive stuff since I used last year’s premium as the guide price to beat!
Now we get down to the quote I’m most likely going to take them up on. Today (25.09.02) I input the Smart details into the machine. I didn’t have to lie about the renewal date this time – early November 2002 falls within the time span of the validity of any quotes given in late September. Here again, I used last year’s premium as the guide price, knowing full well that insurance has never been known to get cheaper. Once you’ve reached maximum no-claims-bonus, there’s no place else to go.
Hey ho! Ping goes the e-mail, and yes, you guessed it, they can beat my last year’s premium by £100, and still give me Protected NCB, unlimited screen replacements etc. etc.
I followed the link through to the selected insurer, in this case, Elephant.com where I was shown a summary of the quote, and the expiry date of its validity. All useful stuff. I haven’t had the phone call yet, but this is one deal I’ll probably be taking them up on.
Not bad eh? A potential saving of £240 and I didn’t even have to do any leg work!
As a footnote, I went back to their site and looked at the “About Us” section. They are, surprise, a subsidiary of Admiral, as I believe is Elephant too. However, if their brief is to trawl for cheaper insurance, then presumably they have to favour non-Admiral companies where relevant, otherwise it wouldn’t be long before someone realised that they are only a front for Elephant. It was Admiral who didn’t want to touch the Smart last year. Any way, Elephant can’t help being cheaper, can they?
Advantages: cheap, quick and easy Disadvantages: still waiting for my cover note
***WHY NEEDED***
It was that dreaded time of year again. The car insurance was due. And by some unfortunate circumstance the car tax was due too!
I had my quote through from my original car insurance company and wasn't happy with the price they were offering. There quote to stay with the same company came to £608 but they had managed to get me a really good deal with someone else for £581.78.
***HOW I FOUND IT*** Needless to say I wasnt happy ... ...wide web to try to find a cheaper quote.
Originally I just searched car insurance. Google then brought up loads and loads of pages of different insurance sites.
I duly started to compete my details in every site I could find.
I managed to get the price down to £348 using tesco's own insurance.
Then I found confused.com.
***HOW TO USE***
Just like all other insurance sites you input all your details i.e. The car, The drivers, No claims bonus, ...
fbaggy 04.10.2004
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Confused.com
Advantages: Very quick way of getting a lot of insurance quotes Disadvantages: None that I came across
...saw a TV advert for Confused.com which promised to take away even this hassle, making the internet process an even more attractive option. According to their commercial, you fill in the one form, and they do the hard work of sending it to the various insurance companies. Sounds simple enough so I logged on to their site.
On the home page you are greeted with 2 options – to log in as an existing customer or to begin a search as a new customer. The ... ...felt confident that the price Confused.com had found was probably about the best I was going to get. I clicked on the Churchill link and another window popped up detailing the quote and the excesses I had agreed to. Legal cover was an optional £16.99 and it lets you know what your initial deposit will be. There is another link that took me straight to the Churchill website, asking me for the password I had set up earlier and giving me a security ...
AnitaM 08.05.2003
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Confused.com
Advantages: Someone else does the job for you. Easy to navigate. Save Money Disadvantages: Can take a while to input all your info.
...had seen adverts for, and Confused.Com was the first to spring to mind. Probably because the advert was so annoying, and never made sense. You'd think that Confused.com would be the last place to look.
*HOW IT WORKS*
You need to navigate your way through the site and input all the information about yourself, your car, and any additional drivers (if any). You don't even need to worry about all of your car details, simply enter you Car Registration ... ...a confirmation email both from Confused.com and any quote that you check out.
*HOW WAS IT FOR ME*
Well after checking out the quotes and talking to my partner about what were the best deals, we chose our quote. And, although we didn't actually complete the deal online, it certainly saved us about 1/2 hour on the phone. After about 7 minutes on the phone just going over some of the details the deal was done. We managed to save over £170 a year on ...
ShellyQ1975 14.02.2007
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Confused.com
Advantages: Straightforward Disadvantages: You can confuse yourself... see below...
...the web. I found Confused.com via Google.
USING THE SITE
When entering the information, I found the screens pretty straightforward, if a little slow. My car came up without any problems as did my address. I work for myself. I therefore had problems with the job page, it didn't really like the concept that I was self employed and kept asking for an employer. My husband, the second driver, is also self employed, which led to a repeat performance ... ...of the job descriptions on confused.com or make it a bit more flexible but, having said that, the job title doesn't seem to make too much difference to the premium.
I also experimented with my expected business miles - I'm a start up so there could be a significant variation in the mileage I do depending whether or not my business takes off, so I needed quotes which would give me costs for a bad year, a good year and a blummin' good year. The result, ...
Sweary 13.11.2003
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Confused.com
Advantages: Quick, easy, free service Disadvantages: Not always all insurers returned; not all options available
I have used Confused for 2 years past ....
The idea is not new - fill in one form and they submit it electronically to multiple car insurers and then tell you the best quotes.
If you like a quotation, then click on the link to continue and Confused earn their pennies.
How does it work?
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You fill in the usual car insurance details to their website form.
It is easy to use and reasonably quick.
You will find that it often ... ...- they have to gather the information for all sites to enable the best possible search.
The Results
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They email you when complete with a link back to the results.
The results are presented in a nice table, listing cheapest to most expensive quote, together with a selection of the insurers who could not / would not quote.
What's Missing
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Payment options and APRs - if you want to stagger payments or pay ...
a4angus 23.03.2005
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Confused.com
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Advantages: Cheap Disadvantages: Your call is important to us, please hold....
I had to renew my car insurance in January, I have been with the AA for 2 years, and through the AA with Advantage insurance.
When my renewal came through it wasn’t really any lower than the previous year so I decided to shop around.
Using the rather excellent confused.com and searching about the cheapest quote was with Peoples Choice some £55 cheaper with the AA and with cover still through advantage insurance.
I phoned the AA first to see if they would match the quote, they didn’t so I followed the instructions on the website and signed up to people choice. I was told payment was successful and I would receive my documents soon.
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