Home Insurance Reviews
An increasing number of review based websites are now providing the ability for policyholders to post home insurance reviews on their experiences of dealing with home insurance companies. People buy from people. So most of us seek reassurance from others before making a decision to buy something. You can now get written reassurance, by visiting any one of the large number of unbiased and impartial financial portals. These provide the ability to read or post home insurance reviews in minutes. So if you’re policy is up for renewal and you are considering switching your home insurance policy, but are nervous and not sure where to start, you could browse through thousands of reviews from like-minded homeowners. But are these ‘review’ websites impartial? and will the general feedback you glean from going through reviews, give you an objective view of the insurance company and it’s home insurance policies?…
The primary purpose of the home insurance reviews website is to facilitate the individual posting from members of the general public. Most have been set up to allow users to describe in their own words, what they think about home insurance companies and policies. Most operate on the basis of a simple registration and validation process, via the uses e-mail, to prove they are real. This allows users to then log in and start posting reviews. Most of the larger review based forums use a five star ranking based system, so that reviews can be collectively ranked on a ‘like-for-like’ basis. Be careful when looking at the headline totals of all of the star ratings put together. As with most things on the Internet, people’s attention span is extremely limited. It is all too easy to look at a list of home insurance companies and their associated star ratings against them – then make instant, snap judgements about how well they’re likely to treat you as a customer in the future. In other words takes on time to read the negative reviews to understand some of the issues raised by other policyholders.
Most sites prompt users to complete an online review form. They first need to allocate a star rating for customer service, type of cover, value for money, whether they made a claim or not and an overall star rating. These individual scores (from zero stars to five stars) in each category provide some measure of instant reward for the user. There is always a large blank area of the form to allow free text to be entered and users to say whatever they want, (within the limits of the terms and conditions of the site). Notably any defamatory or offensive remarks would normally be removed manually, via the editor of the website.
Home insurance reviews will tend be very subjective, emotional and reflect on the experiences of individuals. You must question the motives of policyholders who invested their time in disseminating information to the general public. In particular the Internet is fantastic place to get things off your chest – to have a good moan and whinge. These complaints are probably for very valid and real reasons. If you visit most blogs, forums, bulletin boards or reviews based websites – you will find them prominently littered with people complaining. However look at this in a positive light. There are hardly any insurance companies that do not have some negative feedback somewhere online. If hardly anybody is complaining about an insurance company (you are interested in getting abuilding and contents quote from), you could look at this as a positive sign. In other words see which insurer has the most negative reviews and then the least negative reviews.
One of the growing areas of concern regarding review based websites, is how honest and genuine some of the reviews actually are. In the travel industry many hoteliers have been caught writing their own travel reviews anonymously, singing their own praises. To try and combat fake reviews, many websites have strict terms and conditions as well as editorial safeguards to check and judge each individual review on it’s own merits. If you come across a home insurance review website that is fully automated without any such checks in place, it is probable some of the home insurance reviews may have been made up. Conversely most decent home insurance review websites will also post helpful hints on the best way to post a review. Some people may have had a positive experience and want to share this in the most objective way they can. Hints and tips and guidelines can also help these policyholders eliminate one line reviews, disclosing personal information they shouldn’t, identifying copyrighted information and accidentally posting inappropriate material.
Because of the anonymous nature of the Internet, policyholders are more likely to anonymously criticise rather than leave their contact details. Most simply want to they post their home insurance review to get things off my chest and let out their frustrations. In particular policyholders who have experienced poor claims management is one of the most common themes of negative reviews. It is also possible that competing insurance entities may post malicious comments about their archrivals, in order to put off potential new business customers from requesting a home insurance quote.
Home insurance reviews have also become viral. Many review based websites have caught on pretty quickly to the power off recommendation. Functionality of most sites enables readers to use social bookmarks into Facebook and Twitter, to share what they’ve discovered with their friends. Even more cleverly, the ability exists to Comment or ‘Rate’ any particular review already posted. This has the effect of snowballing the amount of content on the home insurance reviews website. Likewise any malicious or silly posts that have slipped through the editorial net, can be ‘Reported’ to the website editor, so that the community doesn’t suffer from spammers or malicious posts.
Please be warned that you should not take any decision with regard to the purchase of insurance based solely on information obtained from a review website, particularly if the website is not authorized and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Insurance is a highly regulated industry and for good reason. The Financial Service Authority impose strict guidelines and control on the purchase of insurance and you should take steps to insure that any decision you make, is based on fact and only after you have been provided with the relevant information which you have perused, to enable you to make an informed decision about your choice of cover.
For a Home Insurance Quote contact Assetsure. We are able to offer insurance for a wide range of Uk property types including nonstandard construction
