confused.com

My new job means I have to provide my own car which in turn means I have to insure it. I started to get prices last week and the thought of repeating answers ad nauseam to several insurance companies' call centre staff didn't exactly tickle me so I took confused.com at it's word and typed in my details on-line. Theory goes that they feed the data to 18 insurers and come back with all the prices and main variations in cover. Having driven a company car for a while I knew I'd have lost some of my no claims bonus so wasn't expecting a low price. The cheapest came back as £900 with most others somewhere between £1200 and £1300. My flabber was well and truely gasted but as I could see all 18 on a web page I thought I'd have no alternative but to plump for the £900 and swallow it. As a just-in-case, I thought I'd go the old fashioned way and ring a broker. £600. Quicker than I could fill in a web form. Piece of piss. There's a moral here isn't there. I was well aware internet retailers weren't necessarily cheaper, and if you're buying something tangible that customer service is invariably slow and shite (3 months to get a refund on a defective MP3 player from Pixmania, French cunts) but on something like insurance you really do expect the web to come up trumps. After all, it's you who's doing all the work. But 1/3 cheaper, or 50% more expensive depending on which way you want to look at it? So forget confused.com. They're stacked full of insurers who operate under multiple brands for different distribution channels. They rely on us either

1. believing that the web is usually significantly cheaper or
2. being too busy/lazy to ring a phone number during normal business hours and talk to a real person

On the plus side however, technically I've saved £300. So how should I treat myself?