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Last week was an interesting week. It finished off with me attending the Nomadic Marketing course at the UCT Graduate school of business, but started off with me playing a bit of insurance tennis first. Here's the story...

I've been insure with OUTsurance for the past year or so, claim free and without any any real incident. The rate was OK (R550pm) and they seemed like a nice bunch of people. About two weeks ago I received a notification letter from them saying that my it was time for my annual re-rate and that my premium would now be adjusted to just under R650 per month. After reading this email from them, my bullshit meter went crazy and for about ten minutes I stormed about sayin 'this is bullshit! this is bullshit!" Then I forgot about it, until Monday.

First off I called Mutual & Federal and asked them for a quote. I have my other vehicle insured with them, so I figured that they would take this into account and give me a good deal on my second car. No dice - they came back with a premium of roughly R750. I tell it was a helluva temptaion NOT to tell the consultant what he could do with that quote.

Next up was Dial Direct - I filled in their online quote form and in a few hours I received a call from one of their consultants. He seemed like a nice enough guy and he agreed that both OUTsurance and M&F had lost their marbles with prices like those. He quoted me slighlty over R550, and I asked him to please adjust the quote to under R550. 'No problem' he said, 'I just need to confirm with my manager.' I still haven't heard back from him. I was ready to close the deal at R550 in all honesty, but I thought I'd push my luck. If he'd bothered to call back, I'd be a happy Dial Direct customer right about now.

The third stop on the street was the really interesting one - www.miway.co.za. I once again filled in a online form but this time got a call from a consultant in a matter of minutes. I can't remember her name right now, but she was bubbly, funny and very helpful. Within a few minutes she'd captured my details and given me a stunnig quote of R400 flat. She then advised me that in order to get the cover, I'd need to have a tracking device installed in my vehicle, which would cost a further R85/pm. In my mind this was perfect - R485 still clocked in less than my original OUTsurance premium. 'Fine -I'll take it' was the response from me. I then got on the horn to the purple and green people and told the cancellations guy that I wanted to well...cancel. ''But wait.." said he..."What if we reduce your premium? we'll give you a premium of R450!" "Hmm...said I, "sounds good to me! " So back on the phone to MiWay to break the bad news to them. This insurance chess/tennis/tug of war got really interestin when MiWay then came in worth an even lower offer or R291 (gasp) plus the R85 tracker fee. This was almost HALF of what OUTsurance wanted to 'adjust' em too! And so, back to OUTsurance who then pulled a power play and adjusted my premium to only R350!!! I won't bore you with the rest of the back/forth, but needless to say MiWay couldn't go any lower and OUTsurance retained my business.


I think that the point of this long, convoluted ramble is that as a business, OUTsurance did pretty well to retain me as a customer. They were friendly, fast and professional. And the entire saga took only one hour, which is a pleasant surprise based on my past dealings with insurance. Well done OUTsurance.





Lester

P.S The nice lady at OUTsurance said that I should call back every eight months or so to see whether or not I qualify for a premium reduction, since I'd been with them that little bit longer. If you have a policy with them, why not give them a call on 08 600 70 000