[devonlady]

I really didn't know you could haggle with vehicle insurance, but my son tells me you can with just about everything, even buying a washing machine. You live and learn eh!!

[DavidandCollette]

Never take the first offer for anything!  Just paid £275 for range rover insurance with aviva . also got a big reduction from BT with their tv and wifi package.  They had a special promotion on so I rang and said I wanted it. When they realized I was already with them they put me through to the dept they dealt with people wanting a reduction!

[bazzais]

I keep my insurance as is just because its easier - but its certainly possible to get big discounts in insurance.  Just check out quidco for the cashback you can get from opening a new policy and swapping around. 

When you consider that the cost of customer acquisition for an insurance company is 'your quidco cashback + quidco bonus + other expenses'  - You'll see that insurance companies are often willing to pay upto or over the cost of the actual policy in commission - this is because insurance auto reknews and they take the risk that youll be a long term customer - like a bank does.

[bazzais]

This is why insurance is so expensive because of the amount of 'brokers' you go through.

I would be surprised if 10% of the money collected gets paid out. - Be interesting to find a figure.

[cloddopper]

This is why insurance is so expensive because of the amount of 'brokers' you go through.
I would be surprised if 10% of the money collected gets paid out. - Be interesting to find a figure.

About 28years ago I visited an old established broker in Peterborough where I'd gone for motorbike car &life insurance in the 60 & 70's to see if I could get international  insurance for my car & caravan along with medical insurance including repatriation etc sort of thing  for a five week driving holiday around Europe for myself and my soon to be wife.

 They looked at me like I'd broken out the local asylum 20 min earlier..
Sorry we don't do that any more unless it's for at least £ 20 million of coverage .

 So I had to resort to the yellow pages ( The con-mans invoice book ) and do it via several  places that were tied to the big boy like  Sun Life , Eagal star  Hammond , Lloyd's etc . It cost a small fortune .


Sadly the days of the old high street broker who knew where to go & was totally independent are long gone or fast disappearing ..
Now the big boys are inter linked most of the time doing expensive Internet advertising and selling via India , it's  likely that they have some tracking in place abroad that indicates a credit check /risk enquiry against your name and or address and that then prompts them to up the quote price.
Despite  them being legally forbidden to pass on information between themselves as to what you're trying to buy or look at .

 Several times we've tried to get five or six quotes, only to find that all subsequent  offerings have leap frogged the price upwards


Now if you could fill out the forms on line anonymously/ pseudo name  with an address that's not tied to you , but is tied to the pseudo name , you might be able to do some thing about it .
 However as they have every single address and name of every adult with a credit card in the UK tied to one of those official addresses it going to be bloody hard to do it.