UK Car Insurance Tips

Whether you’re at renewal or not, you can lower the cost of your car insurance in a matter of minutes, possibly to under £100. The trick is to harness every web compartison service in the correct order, massively increasing the number of quotes, and then sneakily get cashback on top.

In United Kingdom (UK) you can get these savings anytime. Provided you haven't claimed, most car insurers allow policies to be cancelled with a refund, and while a few charge penalties, you’re still likely to save more than their cost.

Correct cover for your car insurance

Car insurance premiums depend on the insurer, the level of cover and how risky you're perceived to be. Therefore start by defining your cover and ensuring you’re as low a risk as possible.

Beware monthly payment plans

Whoever you insure with, if it gives an option to "pay monthly", be careful. What usually happens is the insurance company actually loans you the annual cost and charges you interest for the privilege. While occasional promotions are interest free, usually the interest rates are hideous. So either pay it off in full, or if you can’t afford it in one go it's actually cheaper to pay with a 0% credit card for spending and make the same repayments to that.

Combine comparison sites for the best search

Enter your details in a screenscraping car insurance website and they’re zipped to hosts of insurers' and brokers' websites, literally "scraping their data off the screens", to find the cheapest. Yet, due to their commercial relationships each site covers different insurance company and brokers. However by using the correct combination of sites in the right order you can cover nearly 60 brokers and 60 insurers in UK at speed; more than three times even the widest ranging single comparison service.

Below you see a list of online car insurance quote comparer in the correct order, designed so that stop early and you’ve still had the best search available in that time. It’s assessed on the number of brokers and insurers added, the time taken, feedback on the service and ease-of-use. Do use as many as possible, after all you’ve got your paperwork out anyway; and if you’re a web-whizz simply do them consecutively in separate windows to speed it up.

UK sites where you can compare car insurance quotes:

• MoneySupermarket
• Confused
• CompareTheMarket
• Tesco Compare
• Uswitch
• GoCompare

Grab Cashback

Once you’ve found the cheapest car insurance premium, there’s a sneaky way to get possibly £30 to £50 cashback on top... simply sign via a cashback car insurance website!

These are special sites carrying paid links from retailers and financial services providers; in other words if you click through them and get a product they get paid. However importantly, they then give you some of this cash (cashback) which means you get the same product, but a cut of the advertising revenue.

Not all insurers are included, and you should never choose an insurer just for the cashback, but if your cheapest does pay out, why not grab it.

Haggle

The car insurance market in UK is very competitive and companies are desperate to retain business. Therefore the next step is to get on the phone and try to haggle (unless cashback’s available as that has to be via the net). There's often massive price flexibility, but be fully armed with the screenscraper’s cheapest quotes first.

The first call should be your existing car insurance company, after all if it can beat or even match the best quote it saves the hassle of switching policy. If that doesn’t work and you’re still in the mood, take it to a broker.

Remember next year

Apply for cover from your existing car insurance company as a new customer and it’s likely you’ll be given a cheaper price. This is because car insurers like any company will happily profit from apathy if they can. It’s for this reason renewal notifications are sent as near to renewal as possible; as then you’re pressured for time and less likely to try and find a cheaper price.

To avoid being forced to decide quickly, diarise a warning six weeks before your renewal date, so there’s plenty of time to sort out a new provider. Alternatively use the free Tart Alert which sends a reminder text or email (it's designed for 0% credit card end dates, but works just as well for car insurance).

 

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