Comparison sites conning public over excess?

You might think that using an insurance comparison website ought to make the process of finding competitively priced motor insurance easy. However, the financial research company, Defaqto, has recently published its report “Web Aggregators 2009: The bubble is about to burst” and it seems that this is in fact far from true.

Mike Powell, the author of the report, found that consumers have an "immense and confusing choice", rather defeating the object of using a comparison website. One of the main problems relates to the voluntary excess applied to a policy. Many sites default to a high excess meaning that they are able to give a favourable quote. Although most sites then allow the consumer to change the excess, many people are often unobservant or simply do not understand what this means.

Best of the bunch, according to Defaqto, was GoCompare followed by TescoCompare. Others making the top ten were Confused.com, I4Insurance, Moneysupermarket, Q4Insure, Tiger.co.uk, Uswitch, CheaperCover.com and Comparethemarket.

Last year, Defaqto reviewed the comparison websites for the home insurance market and found several areas of concern. It now reports that, although some improvements have been made, there are still issues with the level of cover, excesses and exclusions, meaning that it is often up to the customer to contact the insurer direct to obtain further details.

Perhaps consumers should not be surprised by Defaqto’s findings; last month, consumer publication, Which?, found that using a comparison website is far from a satisfactory experience for most people. Again the thorny question of excesses was near the top of the list of grumbles.