Edited by Adam Jacobs, Tuesday, 27 Mar 2012, 11:47
I've just renewed my annual multi-trip travel insurance policy. It was a hassle. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone to sort it out.
And this was renewing with an existing insurer, who already had most of the details they needed on file. I hate to think how long it would have taken to switch to a different insurer for whom I'd have needed to start from scratch.
No doubt I could have got a better deal by shopping around. But any better deal I got would have to have been dramatically better to compensate me for the time it would have taken to find the deal. I figured it was unlikely that such deals are available, so I didn't bother to shop around.
The ridiculous length of questions insurance companies make us go through therefore seem to be acting as a barrier to competition.
Just a thought, but I wonder if this is deliberate? Isn't it in the insurance companies' interest to make it difficult for us to compare prices?
Barriers to competition in insurance
I've just renewed my annual multi-trip travel insurance policy. It was a hassle. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone to sort it out.
And this was renewing with an existing insurer, who already had most of the details they needed on file. I hate to think how long it would have taken to switch to a different insurer for whom I'd have needed to start from scratch.
No doubt I could have got a better deal by shopping around. But any better deal I got would have to have been dramatically better to compensate me for the time it would have taken to find the deal. I figured it was unlikely that such deals are available, so I didn't bother to shop around.
The ridiculous length of questions insurance companies make us go through therefore seem to be acting as a barrier to competition.
Just a thought, but I wonder if this is deliberate? Isn't it in the insurance companies' interest to make it difficult for us to compare prices?