why pay more than you should?
Our home and contents insurance was up for review at the end of this month. Last years cover was with Nationwide, so they had automatically sent us a new quote for this year to the tune of almost £500. There were loads of additional extra, which bump up the price, such as Family legal aid. As mum is on disability benefit, she'd get free legal aid if we needed it anyway. Nationwide knows she is disabled (CFS).
We collected some online quotes from other companies (HSBC and Churchill), and found they were less than half of what Nationwide wanted us to pay; for the exact same policy. What's more dumbfounding is that the Nationwide policy was supposedly on behalf of Churchill, too. The quote we got direct from Churchill was only £207.
Today, mum phoned Nationwide and asked them if they could match the Churchill quote (£207). The best they could do was £315 (with £150 excess to pay if we make a claim), and told her we've got to have their legal aid policy because it's a part of our mortgage agreement (also with Nationwide). That's a load of crap.
After that, she called Churchill and was ready to take their £207 quoted policy. However, they couldn't find it saved on their system so they had to do a requote... and that turned out to be £193... for the exact same policy, and with only £50 voluntary excess. What's even better is that our computers are covered by the standard accidental damage, even if it's damaged while on travel. Usually you have to take additional cover for that, at extra cost.
That kick-started us into looking at what else we may be paying over the odds. Our Virgin Media cable TV, phone and Broadband package was costing around £45 per month. That got us their XL phone, Large broadband (upto 10mb), and Large TV package. We don't watch a whole lot of TV, we hardly ever use the landline because we have free minutes on our mobiles, and I'm happy with our internet speed. We found a new deal called Sweet 16, which still gives you the Large broadband, but only the Medium phone and Medium TV (we'd still get the channels we do watch). That costs £16 when you take a phone line at £11; total cost comes to £27 per month. So we've switched to that.
So, by my reckoning, we'd just saved ourselves £533 for 2009. It pays to shop around each year to get the best deal.
I guess the next thing to look at is our energy suppliers.
We collected some online quotes from other companies (HSBC and Churchill), and found they were less than half of what Nationwide wanted us to pay; for the exact same policy. What's more dumbfounding is that the Nationwide policy was supposedly on behalf of Churchill, too. The quote we got direct from Churchill was only £207.
Today, mum phoned Nationwide and asked them if they could match the Churchill quote (£207). The best they could do was £315 (with £150 excess to pay if we make a claim), and told her we've got to have their legal aid policy because it's a part of our mortgage agreement (also with Nationwide). That's a load of crap.
After that, she called Churchill and was ready to take their £207 quoted policy. However, they couldn't find it saved on their system so they had to do a requote... and that turned out to be £193... for the exact same policy, and with only £50 voluntary excess. What's even better is that our computers are covered by the standard accidental damage, even if it's damaged while on travel. Usually you have to take additional cover for that, at extra cost.
That kick-started us into looking at what else we may be paying over the odds. Our Virgin Media cable TV, phone and Broadband package was costing around £45 per month. That got us their XL phone, Large broadband (upto 10mb), and Large TV package. We don't watch a whole lot of TV, we hardly ever use the landline because we have free minutes on our mobiles, and I'm happy with our internet speed. We found a new deal called Sweet 16, which still gives you the Large broadband, but only the Medium phone and Medium TV (we'd still get the channels we do watch). That costs £16 when you take a phone line at £11; total cost comes to £27 per month. So we've switched to that.
So, by my reckoning, we'd just saved ourselves £533 for 2009. It pays to shop around each year to get the best deal.
I guess the next thing to look at is our energy suppliers.