Home insurance: check your provider isn't hiding the best deal

Agree with plainvanilla. Insurance is a necessary pain that we all have to endure. Many years ago I discovered that these so called comparison sites act as middlemen/introducers to insurance companies. This means that they get a nice lump of money for selling insurance to the folks who use their service. The best way to ensure a good deal is to actually pick up the phone and ring around for best part of a week. This is not always possible and you will soon get fed up of the same questions and the the great variation in prices and cover. You may also notice that the same call centre takes enquires for a variety of different insurers! This will frustrate you further as the same call centre will give you differing prices and level of cover for the same insurer depending which number or promo code you call in with! It is not in their interest to give you the best price/cover as they get differing levels of commission aka kick backs from the insurers. I was lucky enough to work for an insurer and as such am speaking from experience and the experience of others. I still have a associates and mates that work for the insurance industry. They recommend we use brokers, who are still middlemen but receive less commissions and pass the savings to customers. The brokers try to generate a certain amount of business, ie £2 million worth in a year with 10% commision, rather than adding 25% commission to each sale. The former is better from a customers perspective as the prices and cover remain connsistent and one does not see crazy hikes of 60-300% like most renewal premiums. The best broker I have come across by far for home insurance is listed below along with their products. HOUSE INSURANCE - LANDLORD INSURANCE - BUY TO LET - CONTENTS - BUILDINGS   They provide cover from some of the biggest names in the business; AXA-ROYAL/SUN ALLIANCE-GROUPAMA-EQUITY RED STAR-ZURICH-STERLING-ALLIANZ- LEGAL & GENERAL and many more. For a fast quote call  0208 587 1060 AND Mention broker REF 30494 to get the broker discounts etc. I have noted that these chaps always offer great cover, good customer service and the price is competitive. The reference number is the brokers code ( that they use to get discounts) yes each insurer/ broker offers different discounts to each broker/ customer. Make a note of the number and ref number and call it when the insurance renewal pops through the post, it does beat ringing around the call centres and will save you a headache or two as well as loads of time. And before I forget the number given to call is the broker line so your call will be answered quicker and the advisor will not necessarily be reading a script....yes a proper person who is willing to listen at the other end of the line rather than a commission hungry employee. Check it out and pass it around.

I find the auto renewal system really frustrating especially as i've moved home and been chaotic on paper work during the move. The insurance companies prey on people like me and manage to get money out of you even if you're not insuring with them by charging you cancellation fees and admin fees. Very annoying!! Had that both with my car insurance and with home insurance. Then you get charged by the banks for an unauthorised overdraft because you don't realise that the insuance company has taken money from your account until it's too late. Sharks the lot of them.

I go through this EVERY year with both car and home insurance. The rates they quoted to renew this year for each were around 60% more than I paid last year. (Halifax for home insurance and Admiral for a multicar policy) I was disgusted by this so told them where to go and went with better quotes with other insurers even when they said they would match them! Also it appears to be impossible to request that they do not attempt to auto renew next year. It would be nice to know if they are just trying to put one over us for that practice.