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Buying online has always been preferable to buying on the
phone for us, for two killer reasons:
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1. You don’t have to deal with some trained
salesperson, armed with the latest NLP covert hypnosis
phrases, giving you the hard sell. You know the sort…
“I can give you £25 off that price but only if you buy
this policy before 5 o’clock”. Yeah, right.
2. You actually can get to see what you’re buying. What
most people don’t talk about with insurance is that most
of the time you don’t even get to see the policy booklet
until after you have bought the thing. On the phone you
get barely any details at all. Just the bare minimum that
gets companies through the hurdles of the FSA, but do
you think agents are likely to say “Let me tell you all
the things that are not covered by that home insurance
policy BEFORE you give me your credit card number”? Not
likely. Not in our experience anyway. |
When the Internet was a mere fledgeling, buying online could
bring you unwanted security problems. These days, it’s a lot
safer, and most credit card fraud you hear about is offline.
But there have always been a couple of concerns people have
about buying online.
1. Someone might steal my credit card number. The easy way to
tell if it’s safe to give your credit card details online is
whether or not you can see a little yellow padlock in the bottom
right frame of the browser. If you can and you want to be certain,
click on it and you should get to see the security certificate
of the site. If it matches the name of the company you think
you’re dealing with and hasn’t expired then that’s one sign
of a trustworthy site.
It means even a network engineer cannot see your credit card
details, as they are encrypted right through to the database.
Another sign of a genuine site is spelling. And copywriters
everywhere will hate me for saying this but if you see a spelling
or obvious grammar mistake on a serious insurance website you
might be better to phone them… it’s sometimes a sign you are
on a “phishing” site, or a fake site put up by the criminal
community to look identical to a corporate site.
But what happens anyway if you do have your credit card details
stolen? Well, your credit card company take almost all the risk.
Usually, they take all the risk except for the first £50, so
with a deal like that the worst you could ever lose would be
fifty pounds. Not insignificant, but not the end of the world.
It’s worth checking this with your bank, but that’s pretty universal.
2. I might not really be covered. This is the risk of taking
out insurance and the website doesn’t work or doesn’t send you
your certificate… well, in almost all cases like this it would
be the insurer who is liable, and almost never you. So if you
ever run into this situation be ready to complain and stick
to your guns. It’s their responsibility after all to provide
you with a safe buying environment. But to keep yourself covered
write down (or cut and paste) any numbers they give you, such
as a quote number, policy number or a customer number. That
way you are in a strong position if you have to call and complain. Although we at Insurance Stall are agnostic about different insurance brands, we know that many people feel safer with a well known brand, that brands like Tesco, Norwich Union, Esure, Churchill, Budget, Admiral and so on have a lot more to lose than lesser known brands and are probably more used to handling problems from their websites.
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