Car Insurance Quotes - Any intell?

There’s also the small matter of quality of service when you do need to actually claim something… cheap can lead to regrets. I pay what is probably over-the-odds for my car insurance, but my insurer of choice has been very good to deal with when I’ve had to make a couple of claims over the years.

If an insurer can offer you the same coverage for less $, just ask yourself where they are making up the difference and hope it’s not in customer service.

Just as tips…

Market value and agreed value are quite different. Agreed value is better but more expensive. More important on cars and contents (very rare for an entire house to burn down, although of course it happens during bushfires etc)

Your current insurer will first try to reduce your premium by suggesting a higher excess or lower agreed value. Just ignore that and they will give in.

Budget Direct is underwritten by/a subsidiary of auto and general (AGIC), a pretty big company. No insurer in Australia is a risk, they all must meet APRA liquidity etc requirements. Which are much stronger following HIH (well, I guess there is a very small risk but its very small following HIH)

If you drive less than 8000km per year, its way cheaper to get one of those limited km policies. Actually, if you drive less than probably around 11000 its cheaper, but not by so much.

ouyangkai said :

Note that when you get to the end of an online quote for one ‘cheap’ insurer (and you have an amazingly cheap quote), it is not until you accept the quote that additional questions are asked about windscreen replacement and car rental. This can up the quote to a great cost than other providers.

I am also with youi and went through my usual rounds for cheaper quotes last year. Similar to others, youi dropped the cost by a couple of hundred dollars when we had a chat about leaving.

Yet for me YOUI couldn’t match my current policy, despite driving less than 20,000kms per year which is on one of their ads. The lady said there is obviously something there increasing the premiums.

The moral of this story is do check annually or at least every couple of years, especially if they go up.

Note that when you get to the end of an online quote for one ‘cheap’ insurer (and you have an amazingly cheap quote), it is not until you accept the quote that additional questions are asked about windscreen replacement and car rental. This can up the quote to a great cost than other providers.

I am also with youi and went through my usual rounds for cheaper quotes last year. Similar to others, youi dropped the cost by a couple of hundred dollars when we had a chat about leaving.

Disturbing.

Nah. Just lazy tax.

Well my car and home and contents were just up for renewal. My home and contents seemed excessive. So I started the comparisons. YOUI surprised me at how expensive they were! After all those ad on saving and given I do quite low kms per year they were $300 more for car insurance and about the same for home and contents. Budget Direct were cheap but still an unknown. In the end I tranferred my home and Contents to NRMA for a saving of $350! and kept the car at AAMI because the agreed value was $3k more ($7500 vs $4500) for the same premium and a better excess.

Funny thing was, AAMI wondered why I didn’t renew my home and contents insurance. I told them it was too expensive and they offered a cheaper deal because I was such a good customer. I basically told them if they appreciated me that much they should have given me the best deal up front and not hoped i did no comparisons and went elsewhere.

Same story with my scooter last year. Low of $180 to a high of $1500!!!
And the discounts for having all policies together usually don’t out weigh the savings made by shopping around.

I just moved house and needed H&C insurance…

I went with YOUI, my combined car insurance and H&C insurance was cheaper than what I was just paying for my car with GIO (who I always found cheap and reasonable)

I couldn’t find much difference in the policies, apart from my car was insured for an agreed value with GIO and it is market value with YOUI. Everything else appears to be the same.