Both the kids cars have renewed in last month and both of them have seen an almost doubling in their premiums.
If we put my in-laws postcode in, which is a mile away, the premium more than halves.
Does anyone know of any website that actually would give postcode ratings to see exactly what is going on?
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I'm having similar issues as my lad is moving shortly after his insurance comes up for renewal, and we're expecting a hike as we're currently in a reasonably low-rated area.
This will give some background, but I would take it only as indicative (though it is close to my experience over a small sample)
www.motorcarinsuranceuk.co.uk/post-code-ratings.php
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Cheers for that but the ratings are the opposite of what I am experiencing!
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They can be counter intuitive. The Lad lives in Liverpool. Aigburth is cheaper than the semi-detached suburbia near Croxteth Park where he was previously lodging with his g/f's parents.
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>> They can be counter intuitive. The Lad lives in Liverpool. Aigburth is cheaper than the
>> semi-detached suburbia near Croxteth Park where he was previously lodging with his g/f's parents.
>>
I take it you don't know those areas? :) Croxteth Park is surrounded by pretty dodgy neighbourhoods.
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>> I take it you don't know those areas? :) Croxteth Park is surrounded by pretty
>> dodgy neighbourhoods.
You only need to drive to his outlaw's place to see that, Rhys Jones was shot just down the road. The bit that surprised me was Aigburth; main roads, secondary shopping and large number of student housing being cheaper.
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>>If we put my in-laws postcode in
I assume that you're getting a new quote? What happens if you put the same postcode you're already in?
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A son's insurance went up from £320 to £520 with Esure - phoned up & they said his postcode had bad claims - never claimed in 20+ years other than from 3rd party!
He tried Aviva & they came out @ £240 with 10% off for having his house with them.
Last month I got Esure renewal £300+ instead of £176 last year. It's your postcode claims was their reply. Off to Aviva £162 with more cover..... Phoned Esure to say I had walked & not to take premium - Quote" we would have matched Aviva".
So car, house+ contents & breakdown done for a total of under £400 last month!
It pays to shop around! 20 years ago I was paying £1000+
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>> A son's insurance went up from £320 to £520 with Esure - phoned up &
>> they said his postcode had bad claims - never claimed in 20+ years other than
>> from 3rd party!
>>
>> He tried Aviva & they came out @ £240 with 10% off for having his
>> house with them.
Why not simply use one of those on-line search engine things? Whether it's the rodents, the irritating fat bloke parking a car, or the opera singer walking up and down on the plane wing. Doesn't really matter, try more than one, although I find the price seems to go up the more searches I do.
When you done that, choose the cheapest company whose name is acceptable to you.
Job jobbed.
Do NOT be loyal!
Last edited by: Duncan on Thu 24 Aug 17 at 11:23
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When they quote by postcode are they looking at the full code or just the area letters/numbers?
Most full codes cover a number of houses within a street so are claims linked to the full code?
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>>>choose the cheapest company whose name is acceptable to you.
House went from Esure to Leg & Gen - saved £60
Car went from Esure to Aviva - saved £150
Breakdown stayed with Green Flag after they dropped £12 to £51 - same as last year.
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Duncan, not all insurance companies are on Compare websites.
Directline for one!
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>>Directline for one!
They are almost on-lineindirectly - UK Insurance runs Churchill, Privilege, Direct Line & lots of others for well known household named insurers.
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>>I assume that you're getting a new quote? What happens if you put the same postcode you're already in?
This on the online quote calculators - get a quote and then modify by putting a different postcode in so that is the only difference between them.
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Wow. Weird that it is such a dramatic difference.
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Yip it is, To an extent that I am wondering if in a database somewhere there is an error. But how do I get to the person who manages that database or can give more of an answer other than "thats just the way it is"?
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>> But how do I get to the person who manages that
>> database or can give more of an answer other than "thats just the way it
>> is"?
Dear Mr Blobby
The postcode in question is high risk because neighbours set fire to other neighbours houses.
Yours sincerely
Database Administrator.
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....well, yes and no.
Insurance cost is patently partially set by using Postcodes (at one level of granularity or the other, but probably by the first half).
There are some dramatic differences between adjoining postcode areas (especially if using the least discriminatory levels of granularity).
Hence, if you live next/near to a Postcode boundary, and particularly if you are bundled with lower risk areas, and the adjacent postcode is bundled with higher-risk areas, (or vice versa) it will happen.
I'm in a relatively low-rated area, but the (very) adjacent postcode is generally rated lower (being largely rural). Interestingly, the nearby small town in the adjacent Postcode has a much worse crime record than here - I wonder if it benefits from the overall Postcode, or whether the insurance companies "drill-down" for there. ;-)
Last edited by: tyrednemotional on Thu 24 Aug 17 at 13:01
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Of course, there could be more to it... (but in this case I suspect there isn't)
When you return to the site for a second quote they know from your cookies that you've already been there, and they probably have stored the info and quote that you got first time round.. I had exactly this type of thing with a car rental company. In fact just today it happened again with them. If I use my default browser complete with cookies I get one price. If I use Edge, and clear cookies before I start, I get a different price for the same rental.
I have also seen that if the site is a Quidco cashback site I get a different price if I have previously been through Quidco on that browser, from one where I have no Quidco cookies. That was holidays IIRC.
There could even be more to it than that in some cases, I expect there is.
So usually when getting quotes for anything sizeable I try to check through at least two browsers. The differences can be quite significant!!
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Thanks for the tip to use different browsers because of the cookies. Do you recommend any particular browsers to use/avoid?
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Have a look at Epic - its what I use when researching flights. I don't know if its simply snake oil, but it seems to work for me. Makes me feel better, anyway.
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....If you're trying to avoid the effects of "sticky" cookies, then simply doing price searches from an 'Incognito' window in Chrome (InPrivate on IE, other options on other browsers) should be enough, as it won't pick up 'normal session' existing cookies and any created won't survive the Incognito session.
There is always a possibility that your IP address could be used to identify previous use, but this is very unreliable, so unlikely.
Of course, if you sign-in to sites in order to save details, they don't need to rely on cookies. ;-)
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>> Thanks for the tip to use different browsers because of the cookies. Do you recommend
>> any particular browsers to use/avoid?
Chrome, for one, lets you "open new incognito window" which saves having to clear cookies. It's in the '3 dots' menu, top right.
I always use it for holiday/flight/insurance quotes.
Bear in mind though that the comparison sites store your data themselves and will match back to previous enquiries. If you sign in of course then they are certain to know who you are and what quotes you have requested under the same login.
Edit - sorry I see T&E has said exactly the same thing. So it must be right.
Last edited by: Manatee on Thu 24 Aug 17 at 15:37
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There's more to it than cookies.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fingerprint
So for example Banking website A may know that Computer 1234 visits it and signs in as Bill
Porn Website B may also identify that computer 1234 visits it and knows it prefers to remain anonymous - e.g. signs in as Anon.
Somebody who buys visit data from both those websites will now know that Banking Bill is also Porn Anon and can pair up their data.
This data can then be sold to an advertising or marketing company who can make informed decisions about what to market to you.
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Video's of bonking in a bank?
Pat
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I am sure that they are available.
But I bet its happened to you if you think about it. At some point, some time, something will have been advertised to you and you'll have thought "what a coincidence"
Or Facebook will offer a potential friend, or you'll get some spam, or see an advert on a website, or other similar things that will prompt you to think "that's a coincidence.
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Then of course, if you visit a website form your computer as "Pat", and then visit it from your phone as "Pat", it is now possible to link all the data on your phone with all your computer browsing data.
*THAT* is Facebook's business model, not just advertising.
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The tracking algorithms must be pretty good.
I have devices that are mine and devices that are works. The names on the devices are different (for personal reasons) and I don't visit the same sites, for example, I don't visit C4P on works devices. The adverts for some obscure stuff pops up on both sets of devices though.
I did wonder if they were tracking my IP but my work laptop uses a VPN so the IP is tracked to the computer centre.
The algorithms that appear in web pages however are for these odd things (custom computer cables to connect ancient devices for example) and as mentioned they pop up on all of the devices. So something must be linking the different accounts / computers / IPs etc.
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Are you signed in on google, for example, using chrome?
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Chrome on my computer but IE on works and that can't be changed.
Never bother actually signing in to them.
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There are various websites out there that will tell you how "trackable" you are.
amiunique.org/fp
Is an example. You want to be as far away from "unique" as possible of course. You can see there the kind of things that are being picked up, and how it's more than just cookies.
At the site above, my "fingerprint" is (allegedly) unique on this browser amongst their 400000 odd samples, which is a bit depressing I guess. I switched to a different browser, and although the metrics were different I still came out as unique and therefore trackable.
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Insurance - postcode - tyrednemotional
