The meerkats have failed me

Being a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists I have been using their "in-house" broker for both my car and motorcycle insurance, and my renewal for the car this year is quoted as just short of £220 which when I received it recently seemed fine and I thought then I'd probably go for it, but I'd be stupid to just do that without at least conducting a cursory search of online deals.

On UK television these days is a fairly irritating series of insurance adverts featuring puppet meerkats (it's a play on "compare the market / compare the meerkat") so I thought I'd use that particular comparison website to see what they come up with, bearing in mind any quote would have to be better than the sum of the £220 quote plus the £30 it costs me for continuing IAM membership, so £250 is the target although in fact it'd have to be a lot less than that, not just a couple of pounds, to make me want to go through all the hoops of providing proof of No Claims Discount to a new provider.

So entering all the details exactly as they are on my renewal notice what were the options available to me?

I was fairly unsurprised to see that renewing with my current insurer will be the best option, with the cheapest online quote being about £290, but the surprising thing was when out of interest I scrolled to the bottom of the list to see a quote for an eye watering £1900 offered by some shysters called Quinn Direct!  How on earth do they expect to get any business when they are quoting someone with 8 years no claims, advanced driving & motorcycling qualifications and 30 years driving experience eight times what he's already paying!  Who are their target customers, stupid rich people?  It does seem to include breakdown coverage, but you can get that elsewhere for £50.  Twats!

So at some point in the next few days I'll call IAM Surety in Belfast, and give them my business again.