I have been with Kwik Fit now for just over 2 years and as far as cheap insurance is concerned they are the best. I paid £212 for 3rd party insurance which was the cheapest bar one I could find on the web. Probably like a lot of others, I had never heard of the other company and they might have been a couple of quid cheaper...but you rather buy from someone you've heard of. The only minus I have had is this year with my renewal, spoke to them over the phone and was all done in dusted in minutes. But I did not receive my certificate, so a week or so after the old one had expired I phoned them and asked if they could send it me (after first checking that I was actually insured!). They promised to do so, so that was fine. Unfortunately I had to ring them again but then it arrived. The week before last though I go the post office to get my road tax renewed and guess what they'd omitted the car details (i.e. registration #) on the certificate. Kindly enough the lady at the post office gave me a disc but she didn't have to w/o the proper certificate. So on the phone again and they re-send me a correct copy straight away. Although the people are all very friendly the general service does seem a bit sloppy (But hey 212 quid!).
So now for the MONEY saving bit. Nearly all car insurers charge interest when you choose to pay your insurance in instalments. I wasn't aware of this untill I added up the instalments and it ended up to be quite a bit higher than my original quote (for an anual payment). So I phoned them back to ask why this was. So Kwik Fit explained that they charged 17% (not sure of exact numbers do not quote me on the exact figure) when paying in instalments. So I asked them to reverse this and told them that I would pay them in full intead. Hence saving myself quite a bit of money. 17% on a £212 quote would be approx £20 (calculate to pay interest over half the yearly quote, i.e. when 6 months are gone you have already paid in half the money). I have had a little look around on the interweb and it seems that some insurance companies charge anywhere up to 25+% APR. So if you have an annual insurance of £800 you would pay a whopping £100 in interest. Now I can hear a lot of you think, well where am I going to get the full amount (maybe £800) from in one go? Here my advice would be to, like myself, get a good on-line bank account (which is a tip in itself as you earn interest on your current account) and save up for you yearly insurance bill. My on-line account let's me set up various jars (with higher interest then current account) so I have a Car-jar where straight after my salary has gone in I deposit £50 (you can set this up so it does it automatically on certain date of the month). As I drive a cheap car this normally covers all my bills (insurance, MOT and road tax + any repairs). When saving up for your insurance bill (say £800) you would earn the interest over these saving (save £67 a month, so as before you earn yearly interest over half the annual amount), if you get 4% interst this would be £16. Next to this you would save (when taking a 20% APR) £80 on not paying the interest for a direct debit.
I.e. a TOTAL SAVINGS OF £96. On the overall amount of £800 this is a 12% saving. Not bad I'd say.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Compare Car Insurance Quotes at
Quotezone? Our quote technology compares
quotes from leading car insurance
companies and brokers in real time, so
you only have to Fill in One Form to
Compare lots of reputable Insurers!
Nov 7th, 2005
very helpful by (100%):
