Car insurance anecdote.

[DrFfybes]

A friend has been getting quotes for her car insurance and obviously has far too much time on her hands

She tried several comparisson sites, and changing the number of named drivers between her and husband, plus daughter, plus Son in law.

She reports that 2 named drivers is cheaper than 1, but it goes up again when you add a third!.

Also that the cheapest quotes were unsurprisingly the same companies across the quote sites, Tesco then Hastings Essential, however the interesting thing is that she tried Money Supermarket, then Go COmpare, then Confused, then Uswitch, and each time the price for the Tesco Insurance dropped, From £309 to £299 to £290 (plus a £20 voucher) to £287.

Now this is something i've never tried - I simply go to the meerkat, log in, check they haven't done anything odd and get the new quotes. But it seems using a few comparisson sites could drop the price the more you do, or she was simply lucky that she chose the dearer one first.

I asked her to delete cookies and history and try the comparisson sites again in a different order. I suspect her response will contain the word "off" in it somewhere.

Paul

[bungeejumper]

I asked her to delete cookies and history and try the comparisson sites again in a different order. I suspect her response will contain the word "off" in it somewhere.

Indeed. It's long been an open secret that some companies raise or lower their quoted prices according to how many site visits happen to be on your cookies file. But if comparison sites like the meerkat were quietly passing traffic information back to the insurers, then I suspect it would take the practice into new and not necessarily healthy territory.

I haven't really thought it through yet, but it seems a little Orwellian. About 15 years ago, I was helping a neighbour to book a flight for six people with a well-known airline that has a lot of orange paint on its planes, and I found that the online quote increased every time I looked it up.

Of course, it would have been legitimate for the airline in question to declare that prices were set to constantly rise as the take-off date approached and the available empty seats on the plane became scarcer. ("Book earlier, fly cheaper", and the converse.) But that logic didn't seem to square with the fact that, when I cleared the cookies for this company, the prices immediately dropped again.

Other people had already noticed this phenomenon, and IIRC the airline in question got quite loud and legally stroppy about the suggestion that it was using its cookies to rig its quoting systems against some of its prospective customers. But we got the flight at the cheapest rate in the end, by starting again from a different computer and effectively posing as somebody else. Just saying.

BJ

[Steveam]

I’ve had the airline experience quite recently. Each time I looked the price had crept up … which seemed reasonable as we approach Christmas and it’s a popular destination. A friend suggested trying a) clearing cookies, b) using a different browser and c) [for the really paranoid] using DuckDuckGo. I jumped to the last suggestion - DuckDuckGo - and the price was back down.

Best wishes, Steve

[DrFfybes]

I haven't really thought it through yet, but it seems a little Orwellian. About 15 years ago, I was helping a neighbour to book a flight for six people with a well-known airline that has a lot of orange paint on its planes, and I found that the online quote increased every time I looked it up.

Of course, it would have been legitimate for the airline in question to declare that prices were set to constantly rise as the take-off date approached and the available empty seats on the plane became scarcer. ("Book earlier, fly cheaper", and the converse.) But that logic didn't seem to square with the fact that, when I cleared the cookies for this company, the prices immediately dropped again.

Other people had already noticed this phenomenon, and IIRC the airline in question got quite loud and legally stroppy about the suggestion that it was using its cookies to rig its quoting systems against some of its prospective customers. But we got the flight at the cheapest rate in the end, by starting again from a different computer and effectively posing as somebody else. Just saying.

BJ

Very common with hotel chains, I think Premier are on of the few it doesn't seem to happen on but certainly seen it with Travelodge.
In this case I suspect all the comparisson sites get the same deal from the insurer, and the comparisson site goes "they've tried competitors X and Y and as we all coincidentally charge £yy referral fee if we knock £nn off our referral fee we'll be cheaper".

Paul