Car insurance with breakdown cover

I have discovered another rip off.
Last year a changed my car insurance to Churchill and was offered road side assistance at £25.50 this according to Churchill was a 50% reduced cost. So this year I got the renewal and it went up to £35.00 so about £45.00 with a so called 25% discount. The majority of the insurance companies use Green Flag so I went onto their web site and discovered that the same package i.e. basic road side assistance was less than £22.00!. Well I called Churchill and asked them to explain why they were charging so much and pretending to give a discount, they would not give me a satisfactory reply all the guy could say that they had to cover their costs !! So I asked someone “in the know” and discovered that insurance companies get a sort of finders fee from Green Flag so its even cheaper than the £21.50.
So I accused Churchill of misleading information and ripping off customers, the reply from the member of staff was “ everything is more expensive every year” so I cancelled my Churchill and went with another provider and got Green Flag assistance direct. SO WARN EVERYONE NOT TO TAKE OUT THESE POLICIES THROUGH THEIR INSURANCE PROVIDER IF THEY WANT IT THEN GO DIRECT TO GREEN FLAG OR A SIMILAR PROVIDER

Hi korky48 and welcome to ROB ! ( Ripped Off Britain ).

This report is exactly why this sub-forum was created as it gives people who feel they have been been ripped-off somewhere to go to to vent their spleen.

Although this website does not have a terrible lot of writing members it does get a great lot of visitors that read but don't right. This stands at the moment at around 20,000 page-hits per month. As such many people will see your complaint and many will be forewarned about the sales tactics of Churchill.

Sadly, all of the companies that are on comparison sites pay a fee to the site so that they get a regular crack of the whip at all consumers that do these searches. Because of this it is sometimes better to actually do the search ones-self.

Thanks for the time and interest you took in relaying that warning to the regular users and visitors to ROB.

Hi korky 48. Thanks for the warning.

Actually, I have already been very wary of the tricks that insurance companies use to capture their new clients. They are probably the most voracious of all of the marketing companies.

One would expect that they might make a small reduction every year for it's faithful customers so that they then keep them coming back, but sadly they have a number of tricks that mean you think you are getting a discount but you are in fact not.

I have found that it is always a good thing to do to shop around for car, personal and home and contents insurance each year as once you have had the renewal letter from your previous insurer you can then take this proof of no-claims bonus you have to another company and get a real discount. It is a shame that these initial discounts only work for one year.

Yes guys n' gals that is why I call them "the marketeers" rather than marketing people.

I am sure that if millions of pounds were not spent on these extremely expensive marketing companies our goods in the shops would be much cheaper.

Even the cost of TV advertising must put up the prices of our staple goods by a margin as they try like bears to force our money out of our pockets and purses by a thousand tricks.

Correctly so Paps.

I have found, and I am amused every year by this, when competing insurers promise to beat your renewable rate if you take it to them. Then next year they just fall back in line with the rest.

This means that to keep your insurance costs down you are forced to change insurance companies every year.