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Direct Line Insurance Website (DirectLine.com): The Direct Line website was well laid out and all of the important information was unsurprisingly in their trademark letterbox red. The layout itself is very simple, but it was a bit formal.

When I clicked to get a car insurance quote, it opened a new box, and everything is laid out section by section. Everything's clearly written, but using it the first time it confused the hell outa me, and I ended up making a load of mistakes.

That made me even more confused over the price of the insurance, and I found the best thing to do was give up and start again, rather than just clicking back. Once I got the hang of it though, the website was simple to use. The thing that confused me the most was the fact that there are quite a few pages of information to fill in, and on each new page there's a new price. This wasn't a problem until I had made a mistake and couldn't figure out where.

Their website did offer to store all my information for 14 days, which means I could go back at any time during those two weeks to review my quote and the price won't change, I was also offered 52 free days of insurance, which is always a plus. They are a well known company and just like their TV adverts, the main picture was the famous red phone on wheels. Because they're such a big company I'd expected them to be very professional, which they are, but I didn't feel that the site was aimed at people that haven't done this before.

There were a few things I thought I'd change, for example the box that tells you the price of your quote doesn't tell you why it is that price, it's just there, so it's definitely worth grabbing a pen and paper and writing down all the information along the way. This could have just been me though, as I'm not so great with numbers. Once I'd got my head around it tho, the website does keep to the point and they didn't mess around with questions that had nothing to do with my car insurance. I would recommend playing around on this site for a bit first, as before I got to the hang of the way the site works I ended up with four different quotes and I could have sworn I did the same thing each time (though obviously not!)

My final quote was £1111.95 for an annual payment, or for monthly payments a deposit of £217.35, one installment of £98.37 and then 9 installments of £98.41, which would make a total of £1201.41.


Direct Line Insurance by Phone: In my opinion I found the phone service really nice and easy to use. When you first phone them a computer voice talks you through to where you want to go, I was then put straight through to an operator without being put on hold. They were very friendly, explained what they were doing and were happy to answer any questions I had. The staff were well-informed and thanks to the fact that their call centers are based in the UK they spoke with perfect English, which meant no language barrier to confuse things. They were easy to talk to, and didn't make you feel like an idiot for not understanding something. They talk you through each step at a speed to suit you and offer to phone you back themselves at a later time or date. This means that when you speak to them again you will be speaking to the same person, which makes things a heck of a lot easier. One thing that they didn't mention to me on the phone though was the fact that you have a choice of paying in one lump sum, or paying in monthly installments. They did however offer me the same deal as the website which gave me 52 free days. My quote over the phone was a bit more pricy than the one I received from their website, but the man I spoke to mentioned something about an online discount, though I couldn't find this written on their actual website.

My final quote over the phone was £1232.70*