I finally changed my car insurance yesterday, after realising just how much I was being ripped off by the old company as a result of inertia selling.  I had been putting it off until I got the paperwork through from the DVLA so I could tax the car properly, and then spent my Friday afternoon off (we only do a half day on Fridays at my company) phoning around.

It takes a whole afternoon to do this sort of thing.

When I first got insured with Norwich Union, it was the cheapest quote I could find but over the years the price crept up.  Every time I changed cars the premiums went up – understandable as I was always getting newer, better or bigger cars and every year when the policy was renewed the premiums went up a bit too, despite having one more year of experience driving, one more year of not claiming and the car being one year older and worth less.  The increase when I changed cars last month was the last straw and I got some quotes from confused.com to see if my gut feeling about being ripped off was correct.

The first thing I did yesterday was call Norwich Union to give them a chance to explain why my premiums were twice what I was getting quoted from other companies, and even from themselves. They double-checked that all my details were correct, but could not explain why I was paying £600 when they would quote me about £350 as new business and other companies could quote as low as £235.

I got some waffle about how companies give a discount for booking online or have higher excesses but dismissed that.  It would explain a slightly lower figure but not a 50% reduction, besides which many of the quotes were for the same excess, so I told them to cancel the policy from Monday.

Unfortunately there was a payment about to go through, so they advised me to cancel the direct debit with my bank as they probably wouldn't stop it in time from their end, so I had to deal with the monolithic Barclays call centre.

While you can do most things with online banking, you cannot stop direct debit arrangements that way and have to phone the bank, and Barclays now have one central number to cover all branches.  So I was on hold for ages, and when I eventually got through and stopped the direct debit I made the mistake of mentioning the circumstances…  the chap there asked me if was looking to do the same with house insurance becasue they have a special offer at the moment where they offer free quotes.

I offered up some token sarcasm about what a good deal that was ("Free quotes eh? I bet bet everyone else charges a fortune do they?" sort of thing) but thought I might as well see what they could do since the home insurance renews in a month or two, so I got transferred.

The home insurance bloke did give me a quote which is only 65% of my current premiums for a higher level of cover so it was worth doing, and then he said that I can get a multi-product reduction if I had car insurance with them and would I be interested in a quote…  well in for a penny, so I got transferred again.

The car insurance department gave me a quote which was £200 lower than the old Norwich Union premiums for a better policy (it included courtesy car and no claims protection which the old one didn't).   Kept all the reference numbers but told them I was going to phone around a bit before making up my mind.

Then I called the AA.  Because I have their breakdown cover I can get a discount from them. They ended up quoting me for £318, again including courtesy car and no claims protection.  Not only that, but paying by installments only added about a tenner over the year. They couldn't give a quote for home insurance because its more than 30 days until my current policy expires, but that would have some multi-product discount on it.

I decided to go with the AA, and in a couple of weeks I'll see if they can give me a better quote than Barclays for the home insurance and no doubt spend another afternoon dealing with call centres.

I probably worked harder than if I had been at work for the afternoon, but I will now have £25 a month less going out so it was time well-spent.

Meanwhile I still keep getting letters and phone calls from Sky, asking me why I have moved to Virgin. I am expecting Rupert himself to call any day now.