Anybody get the money from the "we will find you a better mortgage or give you 100 pounds" offers?

Ken

I had similar with a house insurance company. Beat your insurance or £100 back. I rang them and they gave me the quote, which was £70 more expensive. When I explained that, they asked me how much my current insurance was and when I told them, they told me to wait a minute. They then came back on the phone and gave me a new price - £1 off my current insurer. They then proceded to tell me that they had beaten my current price and therefore the £100 offer wasn't applicable. First time I've ever told someone on the phone to piss off.

You should have told them it was over 100 cheaper!

and what is it you expected them to do?

tim

They say at the start you have to prove how much your premium is by sending a copy of your forthcoming years policy. I just couldn't be arsed.

Errrr what they say on their advertising tin.

Save me money.

But they did that. The beat your quote by 100 pounds. The fact that they had to have two bites to do it is irrelevent.

I should have asked "how did you expect them to match the price".

They did

tim

"Matt" wrote

But you say that they *did* offer to save you some money (1 off) - isn't that "what it says on the tin"?

Or did you expect the saving to be at least at a certain level? If so, why?

We offer this, if you like "reward" , but we do not put £100 on the table it is £1,000 with us

We have not to date (after running promotion for 2 years) had to pay out any £1,000's at all. As we have always beaten the clients current deal, and this is regardless of the length of mortgage left.

We can source 12,000 differing mortgage schemes.

No, they beat it by -70 pounds, and subsequently by just 1 pound.

No. It is highly relevant. I would have expected them to come up, first time round, with the cheapest quote they could find. And I suspect they probably did. What they probably then did is try to reduce their loss (of the £100 they would have had to cough up under their promise) to £71 by dressing up their higher quote as a lower one, and what they would have done behind the scenes is make up the difference themselves, or take a cut in their commission this time round, in the hope of recovering it at next year's renewal.

Nobody would be daft enough to change insurers they are otherwise happy with, to save just £1 in what is quite apparently a scam, and where they could anticipate that the following year's renewal would likely again be at least £70 more than their previous insurer's would have been.

For this reason I do not find the broker's claim satisfied, and they should have stood by their promise and given the enquirer the £100 in the spirit in which it was offered, just for having taken the trouble of requesting a quote.

No, by the time I had sent the original renewal back to them by post (Or faxed it), then made the subsequent 0845 phone calls to cancel the existing policy I already had, any 'savings' of £1 would have gone.

Ok, how do I claim my 1000 pounds?

I think you need to be posting in uk.spirit_in_which_it_was_offered rather than uk.legal.

Thanks.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

I disagree; I agree with 'tim (not at home)' here.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

That's a big expectation! Why on earth would you think that?

If all commercial entities followed that rule, then there would never, ever, be any negotiation on price. Do you really think that's realistic?

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

That's obviously not true; they later produced a cheaper quote, lower by

2. "Ronald Raygun" wrote

Err - wasn't it an **insurance co** itself, not a broker? Matt said: "I had similar with a house insurance company... I rang them..."

I would have thought you could do better than a hotmail address then...

Blatant nameism!

To stand the best chance, in a competitive market, of getting the business. No-one is going to bother changing allegiance for trivial savings, so they have to be substantial *from the outset*, to have any hope of reeling the punter in.

Negotiation is in principle always an option, yes, but is it realistic in a high volume market? It wastes time, which is why modern society has evolved to adopt the practice that the price of potatoes available in a shop is fixed. You either offer the price asked, or you bugger off and try another shop, you don't negotiate. Annual car/house/other insurance is as much a mass market as groceries, and I would not expect to haggle. You ask for a quote, you consider it, and then you take it or leave it.

I allege that it wasn't a different quote, but the same one dressed up to look cheaper by incorporating a one-off "poaching" discount.

Often an "insurance company" doesn't actually itself underwrite the policies it sells, and so is really just a brokerage. But OK, it may well not have been. It doesn't really change much, though, because if it's only one company they can't really give two different quotes for the same circumstances, other than by way of a "negotiated" introductory discount. In which case, if it had been a broker, would you expect them to negotiate a similar discount with the underwriter? It all seems far too much like hard work. Easier for them to offer the sweetener out of their commission.

give your details as below:

Mortgage Type Term Remaining Amount outstanding What you currently pay

We can beat ANY payment

what is the relevance of that?