Simple Way to Compare Auto Insurance Policies

Have you seen enough car insurance commercials to leave utterly confused about who offers the best auto insurance coverage at the lowest price? Has their promise to make it easy to compare their rates online made it any less confusing? Because as everyone knows, you have to compare apples to apples to make any sense of it all, right? It’s a little hard to make compare one policy that has this aspect standard, say glass coverage, against another who omits it because it’s an add-on for them. It’s a little like those car sale ads, the ones that say if you can find a car like this one for a better price, they’ll beat it. Trouble is that you’d be beating your head against a wall to find another car exactly like it to be found, one this is added

Well, admittedly, making a comparison is a lot easier in the Internet Age than it once was. And, the more that insurance companies compete with one another, the more obliged they are to make price comparison easier. Still, that doesn’t necessarily give you a clear picture. Obviously it’s in the interests of some insurance companies to hide things from the consumer, even while they paint the picture of being pro-consumer.

Who’s Your Daddy? Or Consider the Source

That’s not just an attempt to be clever. Almost as important as the question at hand is, Who is providing you with answers? Is it a company that needs you to choose them over their competition? Or is it a company who doesn’t have a pony in a given race, so, is really out to make you happy with your insurance selection?

Which brings us to the heart of the matter. You can find answers and comparison quotes in hundreds of places on the Net. You can also examine the anatomy of a car insurance quote, but they fall into two general categories: auto insurance company sites, and insurance brokerwebsites. Do you suppose a company has a pony in a race when you visit their site? Do you suppose State Farm, for instance, would be just as happy for Jane Q. Public if she chose a Progressive over one of their own? Let’s take a look at the two:

1. Insurance company-owned website - Who do you suppose this kind of site would like you to conclude offers the best auto insurance? You can’t blame them. For one, they might! For another, they might think they do. For yet another, they are paying for the site and have a vested interest in you choosing a policy from them. No, legitimately, there are no secrets on the web. They will shortly be called out by consumer’s advocates, trolls, and customers. So, that keeps them fairly honest. But again, they don’t have to share the whole truth in their price comparisons, nor offer apple to apple comparisons.
2. Insurance broker-owned website - Consider the questions above. How do they apply to a broker-owned insurance website? Well, they are likely offering price comparisons so that consumers who dropped by their site will be happy campers, satisfied that they used their “price shopping” site. How can they most ensure that they are maximizing your satisfaction? By providing you with good information. One way or another you are going to choose an auto insurance company because everyone needs that, right? But they don’t necessarily gain by your choosing one insurer over another. While these, too, are websites run by companies out to make a buck, the likelihood that you will get objective information is higher: they don’t have a stake in you choosing any one insurance company over another.

Keep It Simple - Use a Broker Site

There are several of these broker-run websites online, with their approach becoming more popular all the time. They’re not all the same quality, though they all try to offer the same thing: simple auto insurance price comparisons for the average consumer. And if you want to keep everyone honest, you might use more than one site’s comparison calculator, including those offered by the actual insurance company that they recommend for you. Nothing keeps people honest like freedom of information!