Car Insurance

[mustard-tree]

Got an email the other day reminding me my car insurance expires on the 20th July and giving me a renewal quote of £782

That is a bit steep, thought I, so went to a comparison site to see what else was on offer.

The cheapest with the same cover was £316

Thats better, but very strange, as it was the same company that quoted me renewal of £782

I phoned them earlier today, only to be told that they dont know what these sites do, and suggested I tried putting in my details for a quote from their own site.  That came up with a quote for £298, so I grabbed it.

If I had done nothing, they would have happily took the £782 from my card

Anyone else experience anything similar.

[right-then-petal]

well done Mustard, it really pays to shop around

[fallen-archie]

I’ve recently changed my electricity supplier, similar story really they kept upping our monthly payments then said we could save so much if we went into a different tariff, but were perfectly happy to keep charging us over the odds, in the end I too went to a price comparison site and have saved 40% on my energy bills which is not to be sniffed at 👍

[upthecreekyetagain]

I used to live in a world where customer loyalty was key - I always felt that existing customers were the most important and treated them accordingly - sadly this is no longer the case. 

From energy to insurance, tv subscriptions to phone contracts, broadband deals to banks - all the big companies treat their existing customers as cash cows with all the best deals and offers going to new customers. 

Fortunately I now have the time to query each and everyone of these and albeit meaning occasional inconvenience I have saved thousands over the last couple of years.  It’s interesting that when you inform these companies that you want to cancel their service you don’t get passed to their “cancellation” department but to their “Customer Retention” one.

The only regular payment I haven’t managed to reduce is Council Tax 😞

[023mjc]

My husband was a member of the AA many years, but he got a bit browned off by the fact that new customers are given a cheap deal but there is no reward for 30 years of loyalty.  The RAC do the same. 

So now he hops from one to the other each year and is a new customer all the time.