Oliver W.

Completely misleading and underhand.

I used Compare The Market to get quotes. All the information is present and correct on CTM website.

When the details are passed through to the OneCall website all details look identical. But beware, all is not as it seems...

On Compare The Market I selected the option to protect my no claims discount. This is clearly stated in the policy summary on CTM. On One Call's website this is termed as: "No Claims Discount Guarantee: Legal Assistance - Included FREE with this policy". There is no direct information link to read about this further.

When you take out the policy you are then informed that you actually have a guarantee with One Call, not a universal protection of your NCD. This is completely misleading and deliberate. To get proper protection of NCD you must pay them an additional fee (in my case £29.72). But the call centre staff freely admitted they could find no way that an end customer could add this option on the online quote. Google their FAQ if you want to find out more. This is wrong on so many levels... They provide deliberately mis-leading wording about a feature, yet don't offer a way to select what you actually want. In the long-term this is basically a tactic to make it more difficult for customers who do make a claim to move to another insurance provider in subsequent years.

Secondly, on CTM website I selected that the additional named driver on the policy had a non fault accident and a claim was not made against their policy. On the OneCall website this is simply summarised under the driver details as: "Any claims or losses within the last 5 years regardless of blame? Yes Feb 2015 Accident. "

Again there is no option to disclose further details or check the exact information they have. One would assume the information is correct as it has come through from the 3rd party aggregator website, but apparently this is not the case. The policy I've received has a fault claim noted against the additional driver, and thus is more expensive than need be. Furthermore this information is factually incorrect!

To rectify this I must now submit evidence from the additional driver to state that the accident was resolved as a non-fault claim. One Call will then re-quote the policy, but the price may not be cheaper. And the cost of One Call updating this information: an admin fee of £35. In my case - because I expressed my disgust - this will be waived, but the standard policy is to charge.

To add insult to injury, any amendments to the policy are subject to an admin fee, but this does not seem to be a reciprocal arrangement... I requested the policy start date to be yesterday. The policy was not honoured to start on the requested date and has only become live today after I called to chase this. So it seems that One Call don't have to honour the terms of the quote I requested, yet they are not charged a fee for this! Apparently in the small print it says setting up a policy usually takes 48hours unless you call them. So it seems strange that the online system allows me to select a date that won't honour unless you pick up the phone. This is not flagged to the user when the option is selected.

During the call to ask why my policy hadn't begun, I was rushed through the call and was simply asked to provide personal details to identify myself. The call agent made no attempt to run through the policy to check everything was correct and present before it was issued.

Finally, when you get passed through from CTM to One Call the headline cost is initially the same. If you change any details on the One Call website the price is re-quoted. In my case this increased form £236 to £278. Even if I subsequently reset the field, the price remained at the higher price. Convenient. Again this seems to be another underhand tactic. Once you are on the One Call website and changes to the requested policy, even ones that should make a policy cheaper, will incur additional fees. The price on CTM almost seems like a loss leader to draw people in.

Oh, and if I want to cancel the policy due to mis-information and the additional costs to bring it up to scratch, a fee of £49. And this is merely minutes after it was issued!

I have insured my car for the past 13 years and have never received such a terrible service.

The general attitude of call centre staff is appalling (I spoke to Laura LR3). It seems to be all about placing the blame on the customer and charging additional fees.

The website seems to be setup in a way to mislead customers as a tactic to monetise mistakes.