Here in the UK, we're all too used to doing the vast majority of our shopping online using price comparison sites to get a good deal. This is especially the case when we're shopping for intangible things like phone contracts, bank accounts or car insurance. Although, obviously, price comparison sites offer the benefit of being able to see which are the best car insurance deals at a glance, however there are quite a number of things that comparison sites don't facilitate.
In this article, we're going to run down just a few of the reasons we think make price comparison sites difficult to trust 100%, and if you are going to use them, make sure you take the information with a pinch of salt.
Hidden Criteria
When you're using price comparison sites, they tend to set to a specific range of criteria such as price, length, for men, for women, etc. However, life doesn't always fit into neat boxes, and many insurers will offer a range of benefits to the end user that simply don't fit into the categories offered.
Price Isn't Everything
Generally speaking, the reasons people turn to insurance comparison sites is that they're looking for the cheapest deal on their car insurance. Now, of course price is a huge part of the final insurer that we choose, but there are also a number of other factors to consider, and these are commonly left aside when we're scrolling through price comparison sites for a bargain.
People Are Better
Although price comparison sites offer a quick glance at the numbers associated with car insurance, they don't allow you to go into the nitty-gritty detail, or to have your specific questions or queries answered. That's where speaking to a person at the end of a phone at a provider like AXA can be more useful. Going back to a point made earlier, insurance providers commonly have specific advantages to offer you as a customer, and when you talk to them directly over the phone, they're able to tell you really what sets them apart from the competition.
Ultimately, car insurance comparison sites might be useful for getting a glance at a produce that's generally seen as quite complicated and – let's face it – sometimes quite dull, but they often only tell half the story. That's why although they're useful, they shouldn't be relied on 100%, and you should speak directly to insurance providers to get the full picture.