These days, everybody is buying everything on the web that they can. After all, that’s where the deals are right? Not necessarily, and certainly not when it comes to life insurance. I’ve had some experience trying to buy life insurance on one of those life insurance comparison websites. Believe me, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.
The last thing you’ll get is the very thing you came for
In theory, the reason that you would go to a life insurance comparison website is to find the greatest amount of life insurance coverage for the least expensive premium. You’ll go to a comparison site in the hope that you’ll get what you came for – side-by-side comparisons of various life insurance plans offered by different companies.
Is that what happens? Nope.
You can spend hours on a life insurance comparison website and never get what you came for. There are inherent reasons why that’s true, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
You’ll be asked for personal information
Once you go on one of those websites, you’ll quickly discover that you’re not getting any information unless you first supply an incredible amount of personal information. How much you’ll need to supply will depend upon the website. At a minimum, they will ask for basic information such as your name, age, occupation, address, email address, and phone number (the contact information is really, really important).
Some will be even more invasive. They may ask a series of medical questions, as well as questions about your financial situation, including income and assets. The worst offenders will ask you for your Social Security number. You should never give that out except to a trusted source you plan on doing business with.
But some sites will require your Social Security number in order for you to even get into the site. If that’s the case, click the exit button – fast! You never want to give something that important on an unknown site.
No quotes will actually come from the site itself
If you’re like me, you’ll go on such a site in the hope that you’ll actually get quotes. That wasn’t my experience. Life insurance comparison websites apparently don’t exist to give out direct quotes. They want to know everything about you, and just when you think you’ve provide enough information to get a few quotes, they cut you off.
Here’s why…
You’ll be contacted by dozens of insurance agents
Remember all the information we said that life insurance comparison websites collect? That’s the true reason for their existence! It isn’t to give you life insurance quotes. It’s to get information from you that can be shared with the people and businesses that are subscribed to the site.
A life insurance comparison website is simply a centralized information collection system. It is a pure marketing scheme to get thousands of people to provide personal information – especially contact information – that will be sold to various entities who will use the information to get your business.
Within seconds of signing up for one of the sites, you’ll start getting phone calls from dozens of insurance jockeys looking to sell you a policy. The life insurance comparison website is a starting point alright – for the people looking to sell you something.
But it gets worse.
Congratulations – you’re now on 100 mailing lists!
The information that you provide to a life insurance comparison website will be placed in a database. That database will produce mailing lists that the site owners will sell to various insurance entities so that they can solicit you for business. You will become a “lead” on a mailing list that will be sold to any parties who are interested.
As best as I can tell, the websites have a tiered operating method. Insurance agents can pay a certain price to get immediate leads from the website as unsuspecting customers sign-up. That’s why you get a bunch of phone calls before you even leave the website.
A second tier of insurance agents buy the information from mailing lists, presumably at a lower cost per lead than what they would pay for immediate sign-ups. You could be getting calls as a result of being part of that list months after the fact.
Unknowingly, you are voluntarily participating in a lead generating service, not a life insurance comparison website.
The better way to buy life insurance
If you’re seriously interested in getting reliable quotes for a solid life insurance policy, contact a reputable insurance agent, one who represents many different companies. That will give you an opportunity to have one agent who is specifically looking for the best policy for you among many different providers. It’s much more effective than having dozens of agents contact you about programs you’ve never even heard of.
Some products and services are better if they are not purchased on the Internet. Life insurance looks to be one of them.
