I had an e-mail in June reminding me I’d signed up to share my car insurance quotes with an online company called Consumer Intelligence in exchange for £50 and so began my sojourn into insurance investigations.

I’d already had a look on Confused.com and been offered a slight reduction with Endsleigh who I have favoured in the past, I was tempted as I know their customer service to have been exemplary in the past but then I’m a bargain hunter at heart so the search went on.

I’ve been insured with Lloyds TSB for two years which has served my purposes but honestly I would have probably changed insurers had I not been so lazy with the renewal last year. Prompted by CI and their required 6 predetermined calls I ended up with a great quote from the Co-operative and all was looking good. I’ve had insurance with the Co-op in the past and found them to be a decent company to deal with.

My renewal was coming up just over £300 which wasn’t especially appealing, I’m a firm believer that my insurance should go down each year, holding a steady figure is of no interest to me. The Co-op were offering a saving of around £55 and I had the potential to further beat that figure down with an extra saving by signing up online.

Keeping my knowledge of Quidco in mind I went searching the site for offers which could tempt me or at least cashback on the quote I had with the Co-op and sure enough two popped up. One for an immediate £1.50 payout on a quote with Gocompare.com and £70.00 cash back on my Co-op quote and I was about to hit the send key when I noticed the quote on Gocompare.com, three companies were able to undercut my current quote and each had cashback with Quidco.
The lowest was £235 with Kwik Fit with £42.50 cashback and a free MOT. Fabulous!
There is a glitch though and the same will apply on many insurance websites, watch out for all the many added extras, they’ll add things like windscreen cover and breakdown cover and legal cover at figures like £25 here and £18 there but they all add up. If you want the bare bones be sure to read the details and keep your final figure where you want it.

So, ultimately, I’ll have a £50 payout from CI, a £42.50 payout from Quidco for the Kwik Fit insurance and a further £1.50 for the quote on Gocompare.com, a free MOT at a saving of around £40 and my insurance was hammed down by almost a third. Once I claim all payouts and savings my fully comprenhensive insurance will have cost me £101 and a couple of hours of my time. Furthermore, any work on my car by Kwik Fit will be at a 10% discount over the coming year which is useful to me since one of their branches is near my place of work.

The Co-op quote would have been £288 minus £71.50 cashback on Quidco and the £50 from CI, not quite such a good deal in the end result but still a good saving on my renewal.

It’s worth going through this same process for all insurance policies you take out each year, it’s a little time consuming but generally the savings are apparent.

Tags: insurance, online offers, online policies