Is getting Budget car
insurance in the UK a good choice?
In
other words, should you allow price to be the main determinant of your
choice of car insurance policy? When put this way, many might agree
that what you're getting for your money is also important. And yet many
of those that recognise that you pay for what you get - so the less
that you pay the less you get - still favour price comparison sites
and, in practice, do allow price to act as the main driver of their
policy choice. Why do they do this?
Well, when you buy a cheap TV you have to live with the consequences
but if you buy budget car insurance, it's quite likely that you will
never face the consequences if you never need to claim on that policy.
And, because car insurance is quite costly, people favour saving money
and are willing to accept the consequences of poor cover if a claim is
necessary.
However, the last point needs to be challenged. About a third of those
that used a price comparison site last time to get budget car insurance
decide to buy direct from a car insurance provider the next time that
they buy car insurance. The most likely reason for this is to built in
better quality control and, clearly, a proportion of these people will
have found that a budget car insurance quote did not serve them well
when they filed a claim and this experience changed their approach to
buying their cover next time around.
If you buy the cheapest of 100s or perhaps thousands of prices - which
is what you are doing when you buy the cheapest-priced quote found on a
price comparison site - you will be getting very limtied cover that
will have a high excess and much left out. This means that when a claim
is needed many of the costs that you might face are not convered as,
for example, a courtesy car.
The message is very much one of save a little then pay a lot which, if
you buy budget cover every year will, quite probably, still overall
cost you much more even if you get away with your poor policy choice
for a number of years.
The solution? Well, as eluded to above, to build in quality from the
outset, it's best to go direct to a leading car insurance provider.
People fear that they will pay too much if they cannot check loads of
prices. For two reasons this is faulty thinking.
First of all, you need to ask yourself whether an ultra-budget car
insurance policy is a sensible choice taking account of the very
limited cover associated with such policies. And, if you accept that
cheapest is best avoided, price comparison sites become less useful
than direct car insurance providers for reason number two which we'll
now look at.
Because car insurance providers operate in a crowded, highly
competitive market, price-watching ensures close pricing of similar
levels of cover. In other words, free market forces make sure that you
won't pay too much for the policy you get in relation to other
providers.
It simply isn't necessary to check loads of prices if you are adopting
the right strategy which is to allow getting the right cover to
dominate your decision-making rather than saving a little money.
With regard to the latter quality issue, the major car insurance
providers are always keen to offer impressive cover as standard in view
of the same market forces that drive down price. Eevn if you pay little
attention to what you are getting, unless you deliberately choose a 'no
frills' policy from a big provider, you can expect the kind of policy
that will help you out in an accident.
Another consideration here is that if you were to try to research the
top car insurance companies via the information available via a price
comparison site, it is at best hard, and sometimes imposible to do so.
Many websites offer help with finding a good direct car insurance
provider. We suggest this one to compare
car
insurance online
as there's plenty of choice with helpful policy information.
Whatever you select, do make sure that you have a good idea of the
cover you're getting and that you are clear that this is adeqaute for
your current needs. More..
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