Confused.com Car Insurance Website Review

AN INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF THE  CAR INSURANCE WEBSITE OF CONFUSED.COM

The Confused.com Car Insurance Review 2010

Website: http://www.confused.com

Insurance Website Type:  Confused.com is a brand of the Admiral Group PLC based in Cardiff.

It is a price comparison website founded in 2002 and offers car insurance quotes from multiple suppliers, not just from the Admiral group. It also offers many other comparison services.

We asked a large team of people to visit the Confused.com website and report back to us about how easy it was to use and whether the website offered all the car insurance services and covers they required as customers or expected from watching TV ads.

Our Car Insurance review team was selected from a wide cross section of the UK population, with different car makes and types , occupations and ages; the only common factor was that none of the team had bought car insurance on-line before or visited a car insurance comparison website.

The object of the car insurance review was to assess the ease of use, availability of on-line information, and the range of cover options and services offered by the website; not just to compare car insurance quotes as available from an aggregator.

The Review

Question. Is the car insurance website offering any special discounts or offers?

Answer. No it compares prices offered by over providers.

Question. Is telephone help readily available from the webpage?

Answer. There is a contact us link, but only an email address is available.

Question..Was it easy to find the quote page?

Answer. There are 4 pages of questions before you can get a quote and you have to open an account.

Question. Was there an option to recall a previous quote?

Answer.. Yes but when you saved you only save the top four quotes.

Question. What are the minimum and maximum ages?

Answer. None apparent.

Question. Do they cover all professions?

Answer. Yes

Question. Do they cover Northern Ireland?

Answer. Yes.

Question.  Are drivers with convictions covered?

Answer. You are asked about convictions and details but get quoted anyway.

Question. How many claims in the last three years are allowed?

Answer. You are asked about previous claims and their values on the initial pages.

Question. How many pages are there before you get a quote?

Answer. Six.

Question. What is the order of the pages or proposal form questions?

Answer. The first page forced you to open an account then asked for your personal details, proposer details, vehicle details, and your policy requirements. The results page needed to know your previous premium before showing you your quotes.

Question. Does the application find your address easily from the postcode?

Answer. The address was found quickly,  you just had to select the house number.

Question. Do the car details come automatically from the DVLA when the car registration number is entered?

Answer. Yes but you could still enter the car details if you didn’t have a registration number.

Question. What are the maximum and minimum Voluntary Excess Amounts?

Answer. Between 0 and 500 pounds but the quotes could go in excess of these.

Question. How many accidents or claims are you allowed?

Answer. There was no maximum.

Question. Was it easy to understand what the questions wanted and was there the appropriate help boxes?

Answer. While the questions were simple and each had its own help box, there were a lot, so applying for car insurance was lengthy process anyway.

Question. Were all the questions necessary?

Answer. Some of the questions were unnecessary particularly the personal family based ones.

Question. Could you change things like voluntary excess to get a re-quote?

Answer. There was a useful application on the side of the quote list that allowed you to change excess and other details like cover and courtesy cars and the list would change accordingly.

Question. How long did it take to get a quote?

Answer. Around 10 minutes due to the large amount of questions.

Question.  How many quotes were returned?

Answer. On average of our respondents  – 85 with 19 unable to quote without a registration number.

Question.  How much were the quotes?

Answer.  Ranging from £432.86 to £1553.18 averaged per reviewer.

Question.  Do the quotes offered have different levels of cover?

Answer. The quotes offered different extras such as windscreen cover or breakdown cover, though some charged additional premium.

Question. Can you go back and re-quote?

Answer. You could amend your details and re-quote so long as you did so without leaving the quote page.

Question. Did you understand the levels of cover you were getting?

Answer.  The individual quotes had information pages with more detailed explanations of the policy.

Question. What additional covers were offered?

Answer. Most additional covers were available and varied between car insurance suppliers.

Question. Were these covers included or do you have to pay extra?

Answer. Again this varied between companies.

Question. Could you remove covers to make the quote cheaper?

Answer. No.

Question. Can you save the quote to return to this site later?

Answer. You could only save the top four quotes to choose from later.

Question. What payment methods are available?

Answer. All.

Question. When you commit to buy, are you still at the same site  or have you been passed to the insurance company site to complete the purchasing?

Answer. You were put through to the issuing company website when you choose a policy to complete the process.

Question. How did you find the navigation? Was it easy to move around?

Answer.  The site was easy to navigate though leaving the quote page meant I had to requote and re-enter my details to get back.

Question. Did you like or dislike this site?

Answer.  Typically our reviewers answered  – The quote page was good to use with handy apps attached but the question process was long-winded and the save options weren’t very good.

Question. Did the site live up to any expectations  from ads or TV ads you may have seen?

Answer.  Does what it promises but is long-winded.

Question. Was the website quick or slow to use?

Answer. Fairly slow due to large amount of questions and slow on the quote search.

Question. Was the site easy to use?
On a scale of 1 to 5 , 1 being hard to use and 5 being very easy  – how would you rate it?

Answer.  3.5 out of 5  -  The site was straight forward but long-winded.