Blackpool Jags Posted August 29, 2012 Report Share Posted August 29, 2012 I got my car insurance renewal through today; it was well above what I 'm paying now - no shock really as it's what they do every year. So I went online and checked for deals on two well-known sites which shall remain nameless, except to say that one features a fat Italian sounding twat with a daft wavy moustache and the other exotic wee beasts with Russian accents. To my delight, I found on the first site that the lowest quote was well below my renewal price. However, when I went through the whole form-filling process, including my debit card details, and pressed "Purchase Now", it came up with some jive about that quote not being available, and to "ring this number to resolve and see if we can improve on this great quote". So, like a muppet I did, and after 16 minutes of being "....held in a queue, and your call is important to us", the operator, clearly acting on standard advice, said "oh, that quote isn't coming up on my screen, but I can do it for X" ( £168 more than the on screen quote from these people). I asked him for his email address, which he volunteered, so I sent him the quote; somebody from the company rang me back but wasn't prepared to honour what their quote said, and said he couldn't explain how it had happened. Just one of those things? Grumpy BJ having a typical whinge? Nope, the exact same thing happened when I tried the other site, except this 'new' quote was £185 more than their online quote! Oh, and it also happened a few weeks ago when I tried to sort out my mum's car insurance. So the scam cunning plan is: you spend over an hour using more than one comparison site and they pretend to be experiencing an online processing hiccup, and get you to ring them. You do so in all good faith and they try to mug you. No better than car-jackers in my opinion. Surely something can be done about this; worth a complaint to the FSA maybe? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Norman Posted August 29, 2012 Report Share Posted August 29, 2012 Care to "name and shame" the miscreants? Every year I get quoted a better deal from Admiral than my renewal letter from Elephant.co.uk offered. Every year I phone up Elephant and get my insurance at the price Admiral offers. Elephant and Admiral are the same company. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackpool Jags Posted August 29, 2012 Author Report Share Posted August 29, 2012 Care to "name and shame" the miscreants? Every year I get quoted a better deal from Admiral than my renewal letter from Elephant.co.uk offered. Every year I phone up Elephant and get my insurance at the price Admiral offers. Elephant and Admiral are the same company. The miscreants in this web of shame are: Octagon, who happen to be the mob that easily beat my renewal quote from, em, Octagon. They were culpable on both comparison sites. The 'companies' involved in trying to nick money off my mother were Hastings Direct and 'Insure'. That was a saga (no pun intended there) and a half. HD got the address wrong on their own online proforma: they sent the papers to the Indian restaurant nearby, which my mother was able to physically retrieve. However, when I rang to correct this a few days later, and informed them that she lives on a secure mobile home site, they promptly cancelled the policy - stating that they don't insure people who live on mobile sites of any sort - charging my mum £25 as a cancellation fee, even though they explicitly state on their site that no fees are charged for change of details within 28 days, and it was their error in the first place. That experience took me back online, and Insure carried out the trick I refer to above. I then got an excellent quote, which we purchased from a 'company' called Pink. All 3 'companies', it transpires, are in fact one and the same entity. So much for not insuring residents of secure permanent mobile home sites. Btw, just tried a 3rd site for myself, and got a pretty good quote from a mob who have just attempted the trick I spoke about in the first post. Shameless virtual highwaymen these guys. They must be stopped, but I suspect they're technically operating within the law, albeit at the very margins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paddy Thistle Posted August 29, 2012 Report Share Posted August 29, 2012 I've used the comparison sites over the past couple of years and saved a fortuned, I've never came across this maybe I've just been lucky but I saved my neighbour over £400 using the meerkats Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Willjag Posted August 29, 2012 Members Report Share Posted August 29, 2012 Ahem, i hope you went via the Easyfundraising site! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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