Comparing meerkats and other car insurance

This is a guest post by Liz Hartley @lizzieboo77. I want to thank Liz enormously for taking the time and for allowing me to publish her story. Interested in guest posting? Get in touch!

Context

Despite being 33 and a full driving licence holder for the last 15 years, I have decided to buy my first car and also my first own car insurance. I’ve been a registered driver on other people’s vehicles for a few years, but have never actually bought my own insurance before.

Before jacking in my job to take a career break and travel round South America for 100 days, I was in the financial services team at Datamonitor for 9 years, where my first job was writing ‘Motor Insurance 2002’ and some of my last pieces of work were designing consumer trend frameworks to understand attitudes and behaviours in making financial services choices. It’s perhaps fair to say that I am more clued up about the car insurance industry than the average consumer.

However, never having bought insurance before, I was interested to see what my purchase journey would be.

Before the Search

I want something as cheap as possible – being a first time buyer, I know my premiums are going to be high, and being ‘between jobs’ means cash is low. I am also interested in insurers who can offer me monthly or quarterly payments, to ease my cash flow. I tell myself I will check an aggregator and a broker. All my research is going to be done on the internet – it’s the fastest way, and I don’t want to be on the telephone as I’m looking after a poorly, sleeping baby too. I am not looking forward to having to fill out several different forms, and am worried about just how expensive this is going to be.

The Search

The first place on my mind to look for and compare insurance prices quickly is CompareTheMarket.com. The meerkat is front of mind, and I don’t even consider any other aggregator sites. The application form feels long – which may be partly because it’s the first one I’m doing – but there are several pages to complete, with many different sections, and some questions that I don’t really connect with buying insurance – like am I a home owner, and how many kids do I have? Some of the drop down fields are annoying, and I have to manipulate the mouse a lot to select the options. The 3rd page does provide me with a summary of my car type, which I like and find reassuring. All in all there are 3 long pages to fill in. The time taken to return results is very quick – less than 10 seconds to process a lot of information. I like the tick boxes, and the summary fields that easily display the included or optional features of the cover. What is annoying is that the excess fields are all different.

The prices returned are a relief, not nearly as high as I was fearing. But the results returned are largely not from names I recognise, even as an industry watcher. They’re mostly small name brokers, or third party arrangements where I know the underlying insurer and think I get can a better deal direct. I realise I am more comfortable buying from a name I know and trust. The strength of a brand reputation turns out to be important to me. Encouraged by the lower than expected prices, I decide to see what a broker can offer, for comparison.

I decide to visit theaa.com to see what this broker can throw at me. There are 2 pages to complete this time, but then another 3 with details about the car type, despite me giving the registration number (CTM automatically knew the car details – much better). Only one quote is returned, with no details about the underlying insurer – it could be anyone. I do like that a monthly and annual fees are written large upfront. However, I recoil in horror to read that the monthly payments come with an APR of 26.9{acc93bc4c50d705b6582df8463c6e78eab363e734bea58beb26f7f541e3e6037}!!! Daylight robbery! Going 3 further pages along, and I still don’t know who the insurer is. It’s unsettling to reach the final page with the message saying that I will receive my policy documents online within the next 24 hours. But I haven’t bought anything. It brings a mild panic as I think for a split second that I’ve somehow signed up for something and committed myself to several hundred pounds. Not good.

I decide to ignore the AA completely, not just for the extortionate price, but also for the incredibly high APR being charged on monthly payments. Everything about it screams ‘rip off’.

I turn next to Direct Line. I decide to go to DL as the adverts are often on TV, pushing the message that they’re not on price comparison sites. At first I don’t like the fact that the quote engine springs up in a new page (I like to use tabs), but later find the new pages better for flicking through (using alt + tab) to compare site prices more easily. The application fields are irritating – giving options that are different from the other sites I’ve used. Why?! I also dislike being asked when my home insurance is due – as I know I’ll get a follow up call or email around renewal time. There is a security type field to check and enter too, which makes me wonder why the other sites didn’t have one. And a promotional code field – which makes me annoyed that there could be a promotional campaign out there offering a discount that I don’t know about. I fill out the form incorrectly though – and what I like is that the page comes up and at the top, it tells me exactly which 2 errors I’ve made, and highlights them well for me to correct, rather than me having to scroll through the page again to find what’s missing. Sadly, the price is extortionate – about £200 more than I had seen on CTM, and that’s too much for me to consider.

I then remember (from my business dealings with Aviva, rather than from any advertising, which is usually dreadful IMHO), that Aviva Direct is also not on price comparison sites. I like that the application is all on one page, and that there is a section asking me how I prefer to be contacted. I also like the check list of assumptions – somehow the ticks make me feel like I’m doing well. The full price quote and a per month price are shown, making it easy to compare and work out the affordability. The APR is 17.9{acc93bc4c50d705b6582df8463c6e78eab363e734bea58beb26f7f541e3e6037} – much, much more reasonable than The AA, making me trust Aviva more. It’s like credit card prices, so therefore not unreasonable. The total cost (for a full year) is only £50 more than the second best price on CTM (from Admiral, and one I remember as the lowest price was a broker I’d never heard of and discounted). This price is enough to make me think that £50 is worth paying for a better claims experience, should I need it. Additionally, with Aviva, I could get discounted RAC cover.

Finally, I decide to check MoreTh>n – I love their adverts with the 1970s voiceover. The application form is simple – I like the green arrows on the RHS that explain what the field is about or why the question is needed. I also like that there is an immediate error message when I accidentally put a comma after the ‘com’ in my email address – very smart and will save me time. As a pedant, it marginally annoys me that there is no £ sign in the ‘car’s approximate value’ field. The application form is all on one page too, which is good, as it means if there is an error, I don’t have to go back several pages to find it. Sadly, I try the site several times, but constantly get an error message, saying there is a system error, and it tells me to call a phone line. I don’t want to call, or wait in a phone queue, and I can’t be bothered to tell all my details all over again. I’ve been looking for insurance for 45 minutes and decide it’s enough, and that I’ll come back and check Aviva again and try More Th>n again in the evening. I again get an error message from MT, so go with Aviva as I need to have insurance in place for the following morning. (I just checked and again got the error message telling me there is a system error 🙁 ).

The Experience

I was surprised at how long I was willing to spend finding car insurance – 45 minutes. I thought I would be less patient, or that I’d find more instant gratification on the aggregator site. But the lack of really big name insurers in the cheapest results spurred me on to search further. It turns out I will pay a little more (but not more than £100) for a trusted name, and thus good service and what should be a reliable claims experience.

Overall, the process of filling in application forms and proceeding through to purchase wasn’t so painful. The CTM website was one of the most cumbersome, with 3 separate pages to fill in. The AA was the worst on all scores – a tedious, needlessly long application process with multiple pages, a ridiculously expensive result, lack of clarity on who the insurer is, and an extortionately high APR for monthly payments. I prefer to just have one application page, and for me to be able to navigate the page easily using the tab button (it would be nice to be able to tab once to reach the box, but many sites tab first to an info button and then to the empty box). Using tick boxes to display results makes it easy to understand the results and strangely reassures me that things are OK and I’ve not made any mistakes. It was frustrating to repeatedly get an error screen for More Th>n and for the only option to be to call MT directly. An instant chat function here would have been good.