A positive outcome today..
Following the horrors of having to use the bus due to my oversight in allowing my MOT to lapse, I was keen not to let the same happen with my insurance which is due next month.
Anecdotally insurance is cheaper if not renewed last minute; with the Money Saving Expert site suggesting the sweet spot is 26 days before renewal. As such I've had quotes on the go with four price comparison sites; refreshing every few days.
Prices have jiggled about a bit, as have the companies present behind the absolute cheapest which has remained constant over all comparison sites. Today I ended up selecting from the top three cheapest across all sites.
I've become prejudiced against Confused.com as they seem less competitive and heavily tied in with Admiral insurance. Go Compare tout their insurers as rated by Defaqto, who seem to have a mixed rep (behind / sometimes counter to Trustpilot, who I generally rate) so this loaded my opinion against them.. I went through Compare the Market last time who were alright; however IIRC they were offering some sweetener (vouchers I think) which IIRC for whatever reason never materialised.
The outlier was
Onesure; an apparently smaller / lower profile concern that appealed because it seemed more sincere than the rest; while also refreshingly free of gimmicks and the usual offensively inane, lowest-common-denomenator marketing.
I ended up going with the second-cheapest insurer which was about 7% more expensive than the cheapest but had better reviews, more bundled features and a significantly lower excess.
Out of curiousity I ran through the quote process with onesure again (keeping all variables the same) which actually dropped the quote by about 5%.
Finally once having followed the quote through to the insurer's website I had a play with the more subjective variables; figuring my mileage might decrease a little next year I dropped it by 1k which actually increased the quote by about 10%.
Pandora's box opened the numbers were manipulated to find the optimum annual distance; which while remaining perfectly plausible dropped the quote by a further c. 7% to below the previously cheapest insurer. Surprisingly this was also around 25% cheaper than last year's last-minute policy purchase
TL;DR: Would recommend battling multiple comparison sites against each other, or just using Onesure as they seem less reprehensible. Also it seems legit start getting quotes / buy a month or a bit less before, and tinker with the annual mileage since it evidently makes a reasonable difference and if you don't cover a huge amount of distance, upping it might actually make the process cheaper..
