The insurance industry is a perennial favourite for generating stories about bad customer experiences. Particularly car insurance, and especially policy renewal.My wife’s car insurance is currently up for renewal. For many years we, like lots of others, had used and trusted a broker to secure us a ‘good deal’. This despite the fact that we moved 100 miles away from them more than 20 years ago!Again like lots of others, the Internet has now replaced the broker for our research, or at least to find confirmation that the renewal quotation we have received from the current provider is competitive. As a I work within customer experience, I naturally offered to do the work, and surf the web. As a marketer, I am also observant of smart advertising – and went straight to a price comparison website. On this occasion, comparethemarket.com.The process of entering all our details into the many pages was straightforward and I quickly got lots of quotes! A number of them were significantly cheaper than our current provider and I chose one that seemed particularly appropriate for our needs – by no means the cheapest but offering the better overall value.Satisfied with the experience, I was surprised to receive a phone call a few minutes later resulting from my visit to the website. The agent calling offered me the possibility of an even better deal, as a result of one insurer wanting to speak directly with me.
My reaction to the opening part of the call was a mixture of shock and anger. Shock that what I understood to be the source of the best deals (the website) might not be – completely undermining the comparethemarket.com proposition. At that moment, the first reputation died.The anger resulted from feeling hoodwinked. I realised that somewhere along the way I would have agreed to being contacted – but it had not been obvious. And the speed at which it had happened so soon after visiting the website only compounded the sense of somehow being betrayed. The information is actually on the home page, only in very small font at the very bottom.Back to our story. The agent checked some details that I had entered in the web forms and then offered to put me through to this particular company that was so keen to have my business that it wanted to speak to me immediately. I declined when the name of the company was mentioned, as they have a poor reputation in my mind.Incredibly, and by an amazing coincidence, there was a second firm also ready and waiting to talk to me – Allen and Allen (I presume The A&A Group Ltd). By now, professional curiosity had kicked in and I was keen to see how the whole process would be concluded, and so I agreed. It was explained that there was no ‘cheesy’ or irritating hold music, but there was a long silence before a new voice came on the line.The silence was broken and news was not good. What the agent actually said was that no-one was available and could they call back later? But what I heard was the death rattle of a second reputation. Incredible! Here I was, a living, breathing prospect on the point of purchase (a perfect opportunity you would have thought) and no-one was available? Except of course the guy who spoke to me no-one was available … only he couldn’t sell me insurance!Our passion is to help clients stop doing ‘dumb’ things to their customers – and believe me I was, by now, very very passionate … just not in a good way.When reflecting on the call, I realised that the original agent had not identified the company that they were calling from – I had assumed it was comparethemarket.com but a little more digging on the Internet suggests that it was probably LeadX Ltd (a comparethemarket.com trusted partner). Frankly, based on my experience, I wouldn’t trust them. Others seem to view them in the same negative light – a third reputation bites the dust.I realise that I am only a single customer and it is very unlikely that any of the companies are interested in my feedback, but if anyone from comparethemarket.com wants to talk to me about this, then please get in touch. I know you know my phone number. 
Killing three reputations in single phone call really is quite an achievement.17/7/09 update – just received a follow-up call from LeadX, so they obviously have not read this blog!
