Getting Swinton Car Insurance - A Review Of Reviews

"Should I Insure With Swinton?"

Swinton have been in business for over fifty years. They are a car insurance broker so they deal with actual insurance companies to provide the best deal they can find for their clients. This means that individual policy benefits can vary. Most comprehensive car insurance policies should include cover for legal protection, windscreens, breakdowns and ones' no-claims discount. They claim they can get you up to a 25% discount on your average insurance policy.

And now the bad news:

A persual of online reviews of Swinton shows that they are a bit too eager to add charges for things that should not normally attract them, like cancelling your policy, changing an address or even letting it run its course and not renewing!

Other things like a missed payment on your direct debit will also attract a fine, for that is essentially what it is; a penalty for non-payment. One online reviewer even claimed that their 'debt' was passed to a debt-collection agency!

Another phenomenon is 'service charges': fees for administration, even on cancelled policies.

Online reviewers also slate their customer service. This is an area where I think a lot of companies fall down: they save money by offshoring their call centres and/or hire staff who are cheap and thus more likely to be incompetent. Car insurance is not like selling DVDs; there are legal, technical and personal ramifications to it. Therefore, hiring worldly-wise staff is important.

In this writer's opinion, I think customers often make a mistake when they go for the cheapest solution. The internet encourages this. There are, at the time of writing, lots of price-comparison websites claiming to find you the lowest deal on, well, everything. This is all well and good if you are buying a branded, reliable and simple item, like a DVD. And even then, you might want to return it. You may then find that to save money and compete on cost a company will cut back on its customer service resources.

When it comes to something complicated, like car insurance, the possibilities for upset are rife. And, of course, there's the situation when you actually need a payout and it's not forthcoming. In this situation, a cheap deal could end up costing you a lot more; in time, money and emotional wear-and-tear.

The result: lots of cheesed-off customers who find they're now paying for their cheap quote with their own time, in chasing up incompetent or indifferent call-centre staff. Also, there's the phenomenon of hidden charges.

A company may quote really low for X good or service but then the add-ons cost more or they add more in service charges or the like.