Home insurance scam

[JMT]

We have been with M&S Home insurance for 5 years. I decided to investigate to see if we were getting the best deal, so I asked for a requote. We were paying ?560 per year, our requote was ?240! It's shocking that this company should reward loyal customers with such appalling disdain.

[KidKruger]

Is it a scam or your own negligence in failing to check around for the best deal you could obtain ?

Any mortgage, loan, subscription or insurance deal will rely on 'loyal' customers not moving supplier, it's a key part of their strategy.

No company will call you up to give you 50% of your subscription back !

[Robert Poste's Child]

Except some banks are doing just that, aren't they* - ending teaser rates in the interests of not pissing off loyal existing customers. Perhaps insurance firms will follow suit.

(*To answer my own question, what they're actually doing is removing bonuses on interest rates, thus making their rates even lower.)

[????]

I can understanding you being a bit annoyed but this had been most insurance companies MO for YEARS now, across the board they are just relying on customer inertia, you've been pretty naive not to shop around at renewal time especially as Price Comparison sites etc make this pretty painless and easy to at least do a check..a scam? I don't think so. Shop around.

[ponderwoman]

Well I suppose the companies must evaluate how much they gain from upping the charges for their loyal customers against the bad feeling it engenders.

Saga was a very good insurance company for the over 50s, with customer service staff sounding like your great aunt. It was taken over in 2004 and worked in very different ways.

As you can imagine, some of the 'older' clients became considerably older. I felt they used the fact that from their particular customer base, they might be in with a very good chance of slipping in some rather larger premium increases which might go unnoticed by some of their not neccessarily so on-the-ball loyal clients.

My mothers(in her 90s) renewal(with Saga) was eventually going through at over ?1100. LV gave the same cover for ?350.

Interestingly my car insurance with LV has actually gone down by ?3 over the last 6 years although the car and risk has stayed the same. And I do still check every year but no-one could match their quote. So not every company rips off its previous customers.

[keano77]

I'm not sure we've got all the facts here or are comparing like with like.

I find it difficult to believe the same company would quote an existing customer more than 40% less for exactly the same product with the same excess - unless it was an introductory offer for a new customer perhaps.

[Sazzle30]

you and yours had a piece on this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b051vlpt

[dollydaydream]

Hi you should always check the compare insurance sites, I received a renewal quote and

I went on the compare sites and the same company came back to me a lot cheaper.(something like ?250+ cheaper).

They hope you will just renew with out question, and M&S are no different to the

other companies or banks offering insurance.

[Loz]

I've had this experience.

Me: Hi, my insurance with you is up for renewal. I've just been on a comparison site and I notice that I can get my exact same insurance with you for ?200 cheaper. Why have I been sent the higher renewal amount?

Call Centre: I'm afraid that is a different department to this one. They offer different prices.

Me: Well I'd like you to price match... um... yourselves.

CC: I'm sorry, I can't offer you that price. As I said, that's if from a different department. All you can do is purchase a new policy and allow this one to lapse.

Me: I'm allowed to do that?

CC: Oh. yes.

Nuts.

[Robert Poste's Child]

It's just piss-poor customer service really. Part of the problem is that they're so focused on the internal reality of the company that they've totally lost sight of what customers actually want, and they'll only get it when customers go elsewhere.

[DaveR]

It's not just insurance companies. Every year I have the same conversation with a certain well-known breakdown/recovery organisation:

"I'm not going to renew when as a new joiner it would cost me ?x less"

"Let me see what we can do......we can offer you a discount of ?(x-10)"

"Can you also thrown in some additional benefit for free?"

"Sure"

"OK, you got me"

Ditto for ISP, mobile phone co., etc.

[JohnL]

Huge similar threads on various consumer sites on getting Sky to reduce TV subscriptions to existing customers

when they offer new customers all kinds of breaks

Some people seem to get perpetual half price TV - but you seem to have to be prepared to walk away - and even

lose it for a month or so.

[Lowlander]

Every year I do this with electric/gas/BT/broadband/mobile/car insurance/home insurance

Two hours max a year and I save between ?500 - ?1000 a year; best hourly rate I can get!

[DaveR]

"Interestingly my car insurance with LV has actually gone down by ?3 over the last 6 years although the car and risk has stayed the same. And I do still check every year but no-one could match their quote. So not every company rips off its previous customers"

This is increasingly the case with motor insurers because so many of them got burned so badly during 2008 - 2012, when price comparison sites pushed premiums down and claims farmers/whiplash/fraud pushed claims costs through the roof. As a result they got much smarter with their data crunching and now try very hard to retain customers who fit the lowest risk profile.