My car insurance come up for renewal each year about now, just in time for Christmas, ho ho ho. They seem to go up every year, and I got tired of it. Here’s how I save each year and how I’ve cut the time required to obtain that saving down to about 10 minutes.
I started off doing my research, doing my quotes online with a range of insurers. I’d call up my insurer armed with what the competition could do. I’d see if I could get them to compete. Sometimes it works, but there are a couple of problems with this approach:
– Time. Getting quotes and dealing with policy differences is painful and to be frank, it just makes me grumpy.
– More time. If you change insurers, it takes more time to formally apply, change direct debits etc.
– The person who picks up your call has limitations to what they can do.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t run the full series of quotes, but there needs to be a chunky potential saving to warrant the time and frustration.
What changed? A couple of years back, I was running short on time. I decided to skip the quotes and research and just ring up. It worked.
Now I start by explaining that I make this same call every year for each policy I hold with them. I’m clear that I don’t want to consider making changes to the policy, not the options or the excess or anything else. I appreciate that premium increases are driven by claims stats. I am happy to stay if they can help and yes I’m happy to pay now, but I’d like them to see what they can do to reduce my premium. It takes the roadblocks out of the conversation, shortens it and importantly it works.
The best I’ve done is a little over $120 on a single policy, worst I’ve done is they couldn’t change the premium, so they sent me a $50 prepaid card – not bad for a 10min call.
It’s not life-changing, it’s quite small in isolation, but there are some great ways to spend $50.
More of that later, perhaps in next week’s post?