A few years ago I had a renewal sent through the post from Swinton Insurance in Accy. Bearing in mind that the same insured car was a year older, worth less due to depreciation and I was inevitably a year older & supposedly wiser, (save the wise-cracks, please
), my insurance premium had gone up. When I called into the office at the top of Broadway to ask why, they said that was the computer generated quote, and that was their offer.
I walked 30 yards across the road to Catteral's Insurance, opposite the Broadway Pub, gave them my details, and they gave me a quote that not only beat Swinton's offer, but by over 50 quid. At this time, Catteral's were not aware what I had been quoted elsewhere.
I then walked back to Swinton's to tell them that I would not be taking up their offer of repeat insurance because I had been offered a better deal elsewhere. When they asked how much, I told them. They brought up my details again on their computer system, and lo behold, they managed to beat the Catteral's price by a tenner.
At this point, I cut my nose off to spite my face, very politely declined their offer, due to the fact that i believed that they had acted without honesty & integrity, and took my business back across the road to Catterall's, even though it cost me 10 quid more, but still saved me over £50 on the original offer.
The point I am trying to make is that in this case, what was once, "the computer's price and that's it", suddenly became much more flexible when they thought they were about to lose my business. That difference in the two quotes had to have come out of their margin, ie the price they wanted to sell the insurance package for, versus the bottom line price they were prepared to sell for, when challenged.
I don't deal with Swinton no more. To put it prosaically, they can kiss my festerin' ring!
