An Auto Insurance Comparison Online Will Save Time and Money

Posted by Lauren Moss on July 26, 2010 Leave a comment (0) Go to comments

Even though auto insurance can be fairly cheap in the U.S. compared to other places in the world, doing your auto insurance comparison online can be a real money saver particularly if you drive a sports car or SUV and/or your driving record is less than stellar. More and more insurers are offering online tools through their Internet sites that enable prospective customers to find budget car insurance quickly and easily, cutting a task that once could take several days down to a matter of minutes.

It doesn’t happen by itself, however.

Get Your Ducks in a Row

In order to make the most efficient use of Internet technology to secure cheap online car insurance, you’ll need to have some of your personal information handy. Typically, you’ll see a number of fields that will ask for information such as your address, the make and model of your vehicle and your driver’s license number. With this information, a convenient, web-based application will quickly crunch the numbers and provide you with an instant car insurance quote right then and there.

There are even websites that act as a virtual independent agent and can thus get you rate quotes from a number of different insurance companies which sure beats the heck out of spending hours on the telephone, wading through layers and layers of “menu options” before you actually speak with a live human being who in all probability is sitting in front of his/her own computer screen doing the same thing that you could be doing yourself in the comfort of your own home.

Keep In Mind…

You can also actually buy auto insurance online using a credit or debit card. However, before you commit to purchasing the coverage, remember that your quote is only an estimate. Although online, web-based computer applications can give you a pretty close approximation of what you will eventually pay based on the data you provide, ultimately it still takes a real, live, flesh-and-blood underwriter to determine your exact rate.

This said, the increasing intensity of competition among insurers has forced these companies to provide better services and products at the same time they must offer lower prices on policies sometimes dramatically.

Good News for New Jersey Drivers

One example of how increased competition among insurers has worked out very well for consumers has been reported by various media outlets in the past week. While the large players in New Jersey have been raising rates, 21^st Century Centennial, a subsidiary of Farmer’s Insurance Group that offers direct auto insurance, has dropped theirs by as much as 20%. This is no doubt welcome news to automobile operators in the Garden State, where the average cost of car coverage hovers just south of $1,500 a year (on the high side of the median U.S. price for car insurance).