Saga Insurance renewals – Why brand loyalty doesn’t pay

Saga Insurance Renewals.

When my father was taken ill around 12 years ago he wanted to make sure everything was sorted for my Mum, so she didn’t have to worry about things when he was gone. He moved the home insurance to Saga Insurance, thinking they would be safe, reliable and trustworthy. But 12 years on when I happened to see a home insurance renewal from Saga, the cost was clearly very heavily inflated. £616.69 feels like a lot to me for a low risk existing client. So I had a look into it.

I think what makes it worse is some of the itemised costs. £20 renewal arrangement fee? Have you ever seen that before? Where does that cost come from and who on earth would ever pay that.

So bring on Compare the Market to see how this quote stacks up against an open market competition for a retired person living at home, with awesome security and who has never claimed in her life.

This is a like for like quote. £1 million rebuild cost (which is way too much) £75k contents, also too much and accidental damage everywhere. It is massively over-specced, but still comes in 79.7% cheaper at £125.00.

There were actually quotes as low as £102.93 (which is actually 83.4% cheaper) but these had a few things like legal cover missing, so weren’t identical.

So for Saga, they seem to assume that because they deal with the over 50’s, none of them will ever check quote them. For me, that’s not the way for a brand to ever behave. Maybe Saga is just another corporate money making machine like any other company these days. This is sad. I had always believed, like my Dad before me that maybe they were slightly better, knew how to look after customers and were in it for the long term. But obviously not.

We live in a totally transparent age, anyone can see almost any data these days and it is easy to find out of you are paying too much. This ploy of Saga feels like cynical profiteering to me. Surely they can only increase prices at an RPI linked cost?

In the meantime, we’ve signed up with Legal and General, complained to the Financial Ombudsman about the behaviour of Saga and passed the file to Money Saving Expert so they can have some fun with it too.

Update

We have had phone call from Saga and an apology (not an admission of guilt) but they acknowledged that there may have been some overpayment by my Mum and offered some compensation. I am rather delighted to share the cheque with you today for £1839.66. I’ll take that. Thanks very much. The little man fights back and wins.