All you have to do is watch the television for half an hour to see an advert for one internet comparison website or the other. These websites offer to do all the legwork when it comes to getting insurance, a loan, a mortgage or just about anything else, so that you can simply sit back and click on the best deal when they provide it for you. For all the advertising, however, when they provide you with a final quote, more often than not it’s not the best deal out there for you.
Comparison websites promise to trawl the market and find the best deal suited to your needs at the best possible price. However, the FSA has found that no comparison website searches the entire market, thus some will find some deals that others will not, whilst at the same time some may offer information that is inaccurate or out of date.
At the same time certain high profile insurers have removed their products from comparison websites and you can only find their deals if you give them a call or go direct to their website. This means that once again you might not be getting the best deal when it comes to using a comparison website.
You have to consider that there are thousand of different insurance products out there, each one tailored towards a certain demographic, as very few insurance policies are identical, it seems peculiar to use an internet comparison website for something like car insurance for example.
Comparison websites make their money through advertising and through taking commission from the insurance companies. The advertising element of their profit means that they might be more forward about offering a deal from a certain insurance company, whilst the commission element means that the deal that you get may not necessarily be the cheapest possible. If the website is to receive a certain amount of money for every product sold, that money has to come from somewhere and no insurance company is going to take the whole cost themselves. More often than not, a portion of that commission comes directly out of your pocket.
That is not to say that comparison websites don’t have a purpose when it comes to buying insurance, they just shouldn’t be considered the be all and end all.
