Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Admiral Car Insurance Review

We asked a large team of people to visit Admiral Car Insurance and report back to us about how easy it was to use the website and whether the website offered all the car insurance services and covers they required.
The team consisted of a cross section of UK demographics, car ownership and ages; the only common factor was that none of the team had bought car insurance online before.

The object of the review was to rate the usability, car insurance cover offerings and services of the website, and not just the premiums and prices quoted.



REVIEW OF ADMIRAL CAR INSURANCE
Website: http://www.admiral.com

Q. Is the car insurance company offering any special discounts or offers?
A. Yes,10% online discount

Q. Are the discounts only available if you purchase online?
A. No, even if you call to purchase after getting a price online you'll still get the discount

Q. Is telephone help readily available from the webpage?
A. There are 2 numbers available for getting help with quotes on single and multi car policys and an extensive 'contact us' section with many numbers and addresses

Q. Is there a claims section readily accessible?
A. There is a link to a claims page with all the necessary form available for print, download or to be completed online

Q. Was it easy to find the quote page?
A. The link was central on the opening page of the site

Q. Was there an option to recall a previous quote?
A. Yes, you created an account during the quote process


Policy Restrictions

Are there any restrictions to getting a quote

Q. What are the minimum and maximum ages?
A. There appeared to be no age resctrictions

Q. Do they cover all professions?
A. Yes

Q. Are Kit Cars, Q plates and modified vehicles covered?
A. Yes

Q. Do they cover Northern Ireland (NI)?
A. There policy extends to the whole UK however it is unclear

Q. Are drivers with convictions covered?
A. Yes

Q. How many claims in the last three years are allowed?
A. There was no maximum

Getting a Quote


Q. How many pages are there before you get a quote?
A. 5

Personal details


Q. Does the application find your address easily from the postcode?
A. Yes, and it asks you your house number before the search so you don't have to choose from a list

Q. What is the maximum number of NCD years allowed?
A. 9+ years

Q. Can you protect your NCD?
A. You could opt for protected and guaranteed NCD years but it cost an additional premium

Car details

Q. Does the car details come automatically from the DVLA when the reg no is entered?
A. Yes, but you could enter the details manually if you wanted to.

Q. What are the maximum and minimum Voluntary Excess Amounts?
A. GBP 0 to GBP 1000 - changing these affected the premium considerably.

Claims details

Q. How many accidents are you allowed?
A. They wanted to know about all your accidents and claims but there was no obvious limit

General Observations

Q. Was it easy to understand what the questions wanted and were there help boxes?
A. The majority of the questions had help boxes but was easy enough not to need them

Q. Were all the questions necessary?
A. Yes

Q. Could you change things like voluntary excess to get a requote?
A. You could change details about your quote on the final price page and the quote responded accordingly

Q. How long did it take to get a quote?
A. About 5 mins

Q. How many quotes were returned?
A. Just 1

Q. Do the quotes offered have different or varying levels of cover?
A. No, but you could amend your quote details and therefore change your level of cover and requote.

Q. Can you go back and requote?
A. Yes you could requote as much as you wanted

Q. Did you understand the levels of cover you were getting?
A. There was no description of the differences in covers

Q. What additional covers were offered?
A. They offered windscreen, courtesy car and stereo cover as basic, then breakdown, personal injury and hire car at a charge

Q. Could you remove covers to make the quote cheaper?
A. You could not remove the inclusive covers

Q. Can you save the quote to return to this site later?
A. Yes through your account..

Q. Are you offered the policy documents and keyfacts documents to read before you purchase?
A. The documents are all available to view and download from the main page.

Documents available:
Policy Documents
Keyfacts:
Top Up Cover
Admiral Garage and Repair Network
Admiral Breakdown Cover
Admiral Hire Car Cover

Q. Was this easy or discouraged from viewing these documents before purchasing?
A. Easy.
.

Purchasing Admiral Car Insurance

Q. What payment methods are available?
A. You could pay online with any major credit/debit card also you could set up a direct debit and you could finish the quote over the telephone.

Q. Were you asked for more personal or car details before you could purchase? If yes what?
A. No

Overall

Q. How did you find the navigation? Was it easy to move around the website?
A. Good, you could move around the site whilst getting your quote as the quote process was done in a separate window.

Q. Did you like or dislike this site? Why?
A. Like - The site was enjoyable to use because it felt honest and upfront although the premiums occasionally seemed very high in comparison.

Q. Was the website quick or slow?
A. The site itself was quick to navigate around and the quote process also

Q. 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?
A. 5 - The site was simple, quick and clear.



Get an Admiral Car Insurance Quote

So there you have it - Admiral comes out top on usability with a maximum vote of five from our team, that is going to take some beating. It looks like the Business Analysts at Admiral have done a fantastic job on the online functionality of this website! Let us know your thoughts on this website.

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