Excess bother buying insurance online

Hidden excess costs could mean people aren't getting the best deals for their home or car insurance if they're using online financial comparison sites, says which.co.uk

In an investigation of six of the most popular online comparison sites, which.co.uk found that they often adjusted or didn't clearly display excess charges making it difficult for customers to make like-for-like comparisons and find the best policy to suit their needs.

Many researchers found that the details they typed in were changed by the website to give cheaper, but not necessarily better, results. For example, while searching for car insurance in the north of England with a voluntary excess of £250, the cheapest quote on Gocompare.com's results page came with a £470 excess.

Adding compulsory excess charges on top of the voluntary excess without warning customers was a major problem. As was not identifying compulsory excess charges at all -Comparethemarket.com didn't show any excesses on their home insurance results pages.

All of the sites failed to act as one-stop-shops, since none of them consistently provided the cheapest quote based on our researchers' criteria. In fact, there were big differences between the cheapest quotes on the different sites. A home owner in South Wales was quoted £219 from Confused.com, but the cheapest quote from uSwitch was £407.

Jess Ross, Editor, which.co.uk, says: "Comparison sites sell themselves on having all the information in one place and being easy to use, but we found that the way they display excess charges means it's difficult for people to make informed decisions.

"Don't be fooled into thinking that online comparison sites are a one-stop shop - customers need to search around different sites and keep their wits about them."