Endsleigh

They might be one of the cheapest insurers around, but I guess the saying "You get what you pay for" is true.

Their customer service is poor, very poor. I signed up a year ago because they were the cheapest around. My cover was Third Party, Fire and Theft only when the certificate of insurance arrived (which took a week) I noticed I wasn't covered for driving other cars. After spending about 45 minutes waiting to talk to an advisor, I passed from person to person to person only to be told that I'd have to cancel the policy and take out a new one to include cover for other cars. After obtaining the quote, it was £250 more to include cover for other cars! Needless to say, I passed.

My windscreen got smashed by a vandal, I tried to ring the '24 hour claimline' at about 10pm on a Saturday night only be told that they can't process any new claims until the offices are open on the Monday.

After the car died, I got a new one only to find out that to add it to my policy would cost me £15 admin and an extra £75 for the last 2 months of the policy. I decided to cancel as Direct Line were much cheaper. After trying to follow the cancel procedure on the website, I was told to post my insurance certificate to my local office (which they won't tell you where it is!). When I did manage to find out where my local office is, I received a call from an advisor who spent about 45 minutes offering me different products, to which I repeatedely told him thatI wasn't interested. He then kindly told me that it would cost £50 to cancel, which was dearer than it would be to keep the policy going until the end. Ridiculous!

On the plus side, Endsleigh are one of the cheapest around and if you contact them by email, you get a fairly speedy response.