Cover Me

The figure on the screen and the figure on the letter both represent the cost of insuring the same car and drivers for the next twelve months. And they both come from the same insurance company......
Having recently changed my car, I expected my renewal premium to be a bit higher, but not the neck end of £500!! Did the usual thing of consulting the meerkats and discovered around £300 was a going rate. Now I know that my current company don’t use comparison sites and will not match any prices one might find there, so I input the same details into their own website and was slightly shocked to see that figure of less than £300 pop up!
Naturally I needed to contact them, and it looked like this was something we couldn’t sort over web chat, so a phone call it was. Pleasantly surprised that I got through almost straight away to a very helpful person who listened to what I said and immediately said they can match their own website figure regardless of the difference in premiums. A quick check of the details and some minor juggling of excess amounts and we settled on a figure of £300.16 for next years insurance.
Very impressed with the clarity of the call and speed of responses, even more so when I found the call handler was working from home. Obviously lives in a place with a much better signal than the chap I spoke to from the bank last month - crackly signal and his computer seemed to be operating at dial up modem speeds!
In a previous life I’d done some work in the insurance company’s swanky HQ / call centre and I commiserated with the agent that she couldn’t be there. We concluded the call with mutual good wishes and I once again thought how impressed I was by the way this company handles these matters. I’ve never had less than excellent service each time I’ve phoned.
But, if the premium could be £300, why for the love of God send out a letter quoting £200 more than that?? Do they hope we won’t shop around? Do they just want to talk to us each year to confirm we exist and are giving the correct details? Who knows...