Car Insurance Rates
- A Tale Of Two Quotes

An interesting thing happened recently during one of our site testing efforts of the various online auto insurance sites... We received two vastly different quotes from the same company on the same cars, drivers, and information.

Here's what happened. First, we submitted our quote request for two drivers with known driving records to Esurance which typically results in a lowest price benchmark for us to compare with. In this case the esurance rate was about $550 for a six month pre-paid policy for 100/300 coverage. Of course we entered all true and correct data for the drivers (when we do this, we actually are shopping for rates for real people so the demographic, history and vehicle data remains constant.)

Then we went to the Progressive web site and entered the same data. Progressive online returned a rate of just around $750 for the same coverage. No problem... I see the little Progressive claims trucks running around town and realize I am moving slightly up (although not all the way) the "service" chain in car insurance and going to pay a little more for it.

Next came the interesting part. We then went to Insureme.com, one of the multi-company comparison sites and entered the exact same data a third time. (Elapsed time for the three sites, about 13 mins total... not bad). As is typical for insureme, after submitting the data I am matched with the companies and local agents likely to result in the best rates and it takes a few minutes before responses are received. About 10 minutes later, I check my email and I have a reply from a broker in Ohio. He is quoting a rate of about $600 based on my information and asks for a call if I am interested. I call and confirm all information is correct, and he confirms the rate, then proceeds to inform me that the quote is from... progressive!

Yes, this broker was offering me the exact same coverage (I confirmed this in detail) from progressive for $150 less than I was quoted directly on the progressive.com site. I don't know the reasoning for this or whether it is typical or an aberration, but suffice it to say... keep digging when you are getting online auto insurance quotes. What you think is a company's best rate, just might not be.