Thursday, May 21, 2009

Be Careful with your Car Insurance Quotes

By Lynne Addington

Here are a few tips that we have compiled that will help people looking for car insurance quotes during these deflationary and recessionary times.

The most important tip that we can provide is to be willing to shop around for the car insurance quote. Car insurance is one of those products where the price can vary greatly between one provider to the next. Most of the time the variance between the insurer that provides the cheapest quote to the insurer with the costliest quote can be as much as 50%. It is thus very important to look around and compare car insurance quotes from different providers very carefully before signing up.

It is important to note that the cheapest insurer might not be the best choice for you. You also have to conduct a brief research into the performance of the insurer. There is no point in buying insurance from a company that has a history of terrible pay-outs.

Another tip is to be 100% sure what you are getting with the car insurance plan from the different insurance quotes that you receive from insurance vendors. Although all may have similar product names like comprehensive, what they insure can be substantially different. Check the price and check the coverage as price has almost no correlation with what the insurance company will cover you for.

If you want to lower your yearly insurance premiums then a smart way will be to increase the excess. This means that you will need to pay a little bit more if you should ever need to call on your insurance at a later date. The increase in excess will allow the insurer to give you a discount anywhere from 5-20% off you premium. The only problem is that you must always have enough money tucked in your bank account to provide fro the excess should the need arise.

If you find that making a one time a year payment is a bit heavy then you can always request to have your payments staggered for every month instead. Most insurers wont have a problem with this and would actually welcome it. The only downside is that the actual amount that you pay per-year might be slightly more but the ease of budgeting that this allows is often more than worth it.

This also extends to other insurance products or even your monthly or yearly payables. If you want to keep your budgeting easy then it only makes sense that you have all your payables on different months. Never have everything payable in one month. That is just going to make you extremely stressed and isnt wise budgeting.

Another thing that we find to be extremely important in getting the right car insurance quotes for your needs are to be extremely picky and be very specific with what you tell your insurance providers for a quote. You should be very specific with what separate coverage plans that you want and which items you dont need. Most people simply pick a package and stick with it even if they have coverage for items they dont need. On the other hand if you are very detailed in your approach then you can save as much as 50% o your policy by removing items you dont need.

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