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Should You Trust Car Insurance Reviews?

Written by Michele Wilmonen. Posted in Research Last Updated: 05/16/2011

An unbiased car insurance review is a great way to get information on other people’s experience with an insurance company so that you can avoid bad companies and find a good company to go with.

Giving a thumbs up or down to insurance companies through reviews

A good car insurance review will give you more information than any company advertisement.

In the world of business, word of mouth advertising can be just as important as any other form of advertising. Word of mouth advertising is when a client of a business tells people about their experience with that business.

Car insurance reviews are a form of word of mouth advertising for car insurance companies as they are not paid for by the insurance company and are written by people that have had experience with the company.

While this is a great way to see a company in a more realistic light than from the advertising they put out about themselves, car insurance reviews are not without their downfalls and should you trust car insurance reviews?

Car Insurance Reviews Should Be Unbiased

The most important thing that you need to look for is that a review is unbiased. If the review has nothing but good things to say about a company and no suggestions that they could improve on anything or any negative experiences, you may want to question the source of the review.

A good review has a “person looking into a box” type of feeling about it. The person writing the review should be able to see the company as a whole and how each part works together for the insured.

Watch Out for Very Negative Car Insurance Reviews

On the other side of a biased review are those that are extremely negative. If the review has nothing good to say about an insurance company this is not a review to form an opinion of the insurance company from.  A review that is very negative could very well have been written by a person that has had a very unpleasant experience with this company or it could be a former, disgruntled employee.

Either way you are not getting a good idea of how the company works.

Who is Sponsoring the Car Insurance Review?

Take a look around the site that is hosting the insurance company review that you are reading. Is there a company that is listed as sponsoring these reviews and is it the same company that you just read a review about? If that same company is sponsoring the review you can almost be sure that this site is going to present that company in the best light possible.

Now keep in mind that this is only if you see that the company is directly sponsoring the review or the site as a whole. This is not the case if an advertisement for the company is visible on the same page through Google or on a banner on the top of the site’s page. The person that runs the site sometimes has no control over what shows up as advertisements on their page if they have agreed to sell part of the space on their site for rotating advertising to a third party.

Read Multiple Car Insurance Reviews

Never, ever base your whole opinion of an insurance company on a single review. While the review that you read may have a great unbiased view of the company and may have covered all of the information that you need, it is still just one person’s view of the company. To make a solid decision about an insurance company, seek out multiple reviews and notice if there is any pattern in each of the reviews. For example, is the company listed as having rude claims adjusters in all of the reviews or maybe they have a quick pay out time on their claims.

If you are able to see the same information in multiple reviews, this is the information that is best to base your opinion on. For more reviews on car insurance companies, checkout these reviews:

Auto Insurance Customer Reviews

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Michele Wilmonen

Michele's first introduction to insurance was working for a major insurance company as a file clerk and a mailroom supervisor in a regional office. She learned insurance directly from underwriters and claims adjusters from questions and also watching them do their job. Since then, she's earned a number of insurance certifications from the Insurance Institute of America and also a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Idaho. She blogs at Car Insurance Guidebook.

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