To hate finding car insurance and think it shouldn't be such a mystery???

[Botherations]

I have been trying to insure a car with zero no claims discount.

I have wasted hours and hours of my life on comparison sites and playing with silly details to see how it alters cost (for example which spouse is the main driver, voluntary excess...).

I have found some mad facts, e.g. with a £450 voluntary excess it would be £587, with a £500 excess it would be £1120!

It would be £400 more at third party than fully comp.

It's £80 cheaper to start on Thursday than today.

Listing 'teacher' as opposed to 'deputy headteacher' saves £30 (!)

I've been quoted a range with my detail from £480-£1850

It's cheaper with me as the main driver, although we are the same age with very similar driving history

You can save more clearing cookie data on your computer.

aibu to think this should be waaaaay more transparent? Maybe with costs attached to options or a table to look at? I am able to search online and spend the time, but someone like my mum who isn't internet savvy possibly pays far more than she has to.

Car insurance renewals used to waste a morning of my time once a year. Since we had ended up going through a brokerage to sort out our house insurance after lying bastards at a large insurers almost fouled up our entire house move, mortgage etc I decided to see what the brokers could do.

They have been fab. And if I ring them, I get to speak to a REAL HUMAN BEING.

Agree its painful checking every year. I got my renewal from the AA and did a comparison check and RAC was cheaper, I tried to knock AA down (got £30 off renewal and £20 off breakdown cover) and RAC was still cheaper.

I called RAC to start a policy with them only to find out their policy didn't include things that are normally standard which actually made the AA a better deal (eg. fully comp policies in the past always included cover for driving any other car 3rd party).

I'm lucky I'm old , live in a town with low car crime rate, have 10 years no claims, and only one set of speeding points so insurance is always

I used to work in insurance and find it all very interesting, including the algorithms that measure risk.

You may well find that it's cheaper to insure today than Friday... Depending on where you live you might find that there is heavier weekend traffic with people not used to the roads- thus as a new policy holder you are more of a risk starting out driving at the weekend rather than the quieter Tuesday.

There's bizarre logic behind all of it. Wrt the excesses. You may find that fraudsters set the excesses particularly high on a policy. In order to argue '"Well I was only ever going to claim for a big accident given the size of my excess", with bigger claims is bigger payouts and so although the excess seems excessive- it isn't in relation to the historical claims payouts for people with that excess.

But yes, it is surprising and can be hard to navigate which is why there was more of a focus on insurance brokers back in the day rather than the pre-packaged policies that are offered now.

I'm from a non EU country and live in a rough bit of East London so quotes can be wild!

I think there are a few ways to looks at this. 1) bullshit capitalism and corporations talking about transparency but not delivering it or 2) yay capitalism! if you take the average of your extreme quotes you can beat that easily now! with only a few hours work.

I am the person in the house that has to do this and I get frustrated too. I try and remind myself that while annoying, with a few hours of work you can really get costs down. Take 30 quid of savings and go have a nice beer/meal/whatever as a reward.