Insurance Quote - Should You Call Or Go Online?

Problems with getting an online car insurance quote

1. No site is exactly the same. Each insurance company will ask you their own or extra questions so it can be diffilcult to compare quotes from one company with another

2. You might not get an answer for an online quote. If a company gets very few requests for an online insurance quote they may be slow in replying to you or they may not reply at all so all that effort you made in filling out the form was wasted. And likewise, if the company is very busy, they may not have time to get back to you with a quote.

3. An online insurance quote is never final. At some point you are probably going to have to speak to the insurance broker anyway so they can ask you some fine details and if they find something new, the quote you got originally could change. Also, the insurance broker will send off your details to the actual insurance company that is offering the coverage and they may have information on you that you didn't know about, had forgotten about or they may even have information that is wrong. All these things could lead to your quote being changed

4. When you are ready to pull the trigger with a particular broker they are going to send you your insurance policy to sign. You need to check the details are correct, if the insurance issuer has incorrect details and different details, this is where you are going to see if everything is correct, otherwise you could be paying over the odds or worse still, not have coverage at all. But you could say this about any type of quote. Until you have the policy in your hand and it has the correct details, the quote is never final.

5. Time consuming. With a telephone you can call up ten, maybe twenty different car insurance brokers for quotes, each call is going to take you five minutes or more. Depending on the insurance broker and their online quote form, you could be spending much more time than five minutes filling out your details. the irony is the more time and information you need to put into a form the more accurate the quote is going to be but you won't know if the insurer is in the ball park until you have sent off the form. If you are organised you can get an idea of the basic questions that each online quote form asks for and make a copy on your computer so you can just copy and paste in your details, this could speed things up a lot

So, is filling out an online insurance quote form the best way to go?

If you are an insurance broker if defintely is. It saves them a lot of time and they don't have to enter so much information at their end but for you, it may be quicker just calling round the old fashioned way. There is a third option and that is do both. Fill out the basic details on a lot of sites, wait until you get a reply and then give them a call to work out the finer details. The insurance broker will be probably happier to speak to you if you have already put your details on their system instead of them having to do it and it makes the telephone call to them quicker because you can cut to the nitty gritty instead of going through the same old questions of name, address, age, car etc. At the end of the day you are probably going to have to speak to someone of the phone anyway, it is up to you if you think it is quicker to use an online form.

With regards to price, I do not see how it can make any difference if you get an online quote or a telephone quote because the price is based on your information. The exception to this would be insurance brokers who give you a discount because you saved them some work entering your details online, the problem is your probably not going to know which brokers give a discount for getting an online quote. And one final benefit of getting an online quote is that you have a written record, if you are calling round twenty brokers you might lose track and what is what, at least with an online quote you are going to have an electronic copy you can refer to.