Everyone that drives really needs some sort of car insurance, but no one wants to pay too much. You must conduct an effective and thorough comparison to ensure you are getting the most use from your money. But how do you get started?
Let them do it for you
A trend that started with Progressive has spread to other auto insurers, and that is to do a comparison of their policy with the competition and provide you the results. By going about a comparison this way you save yourself much of the legwork. You just have to make one call, send one email, or fill out one form on a web page. You will quickly get a thorough comparison of policies from different providers. You can call around to a few different places that do this to increase your number of comparisons.
Compare apples to apples
When you are looking at different policies yourself, make sure you understand what each provider is offering. Two policies may sound the same until you dig into the details and see that you aren’t getting the same level of coverage. For example, one policy might cover factory replacement parts for your vehicle while another covers whatever is the cheapest. The cheaper policy may not include everything you expect for your insurance.
Read online reviews
After you have narrowed your search down to a few companies, go to some business review sites and find out more about the companies. Understand that many times the unhappy customers are the ones that are more likely to write a review, but if a company has dramatically more bad reviews than others that should be a warning sign. A cheaper insurance policy is not worth it if you have to battle it out when you actually need to use the coverage. After you have had an accident is not the time to discover that your insurance provider is impossible to work with.
There are many ways to go about comparing auto insurers. The difference in price between the cheapest policy and the most expensive can be several hundred dollars per month, so it pays to do your homework. The more time and effort you put into the process the more likely you are to get a policy you can live with at a price you can afford.