The UK Insurance Blog

A piece in the business section of The Scotsman is taking a pop at the comparison sites such as moneysupermarket.com and confused.com. The article is saying that the comparison sites are not comparing like with like (that’s possible), and that customers are being tricked into buying the cheapest product without checking if it meets their needs. I can’t see that you can accuse the price comparison sites of mis-selling because their customers don’t read the policy document before buying. Surely that’s possible with any online site, no matter what it’s selling. If the client buys a product without checking to make sure that it does what he wants, it’s hardly the web site’s fault.

The article goes on to recommend that you buy all insurance through a broker. That’s fine if you want to spend over the odds  on your insurance but many of us have got used to the cheaper insurance premiums which are only available online. I’d be the first to agree that if you have a situation that doesn’t seem to fit any of the online products then you should use a broker so that you can explain your needs and he’ll find something that is right for you. It’s a completely different situation when you are middle aged, with a clean driving license and want to insure your standard production car. In that situation you’re never going to find a broker who can offer the same prices as a direct online insurer such as Tesco or Direct Line.

The whole situation reminds me of the story of the tech support guy on the phone to somebody whose computer was completely dead. He’d been on the phone for around 20 minutes getting the customer to check this and that and then asked the client to check that the monitor was firmly plugged into the back of the PC. The client replied that he’d have to get a torch to see..because they had a power cut. The support guy calmly instructed the client to box up the computer and return it to the store, to which the client replied “ah, so you know what’s wrong then”. “Yes sir you’re too F£$%ing stupid to be allowed to use a computer !”. Sadly, the tech support guy was fired, but I’m sure that he found a more satisfying job as a result, he certainly earned notoriety in the computer industry.

My reason for recounting the above tale is that maybe all people wanting to buy online should be given a simple test to ensure that they are fully capable of understanding exactly what they’re buying. Why does everything have to be “dumbed down” until it’s understandable by my pet goldfish?.

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