MCN online quote warning

[Mpj]

I used MCN to get a quote for a bike with several providers on Monday. Said quotes were provided. Yesterday I had lots of missed calls from the number 01933 351680 but no messages were left. Ditto today. Upon googling the number I have discovered that it is in fact an automated number stemming from MCN and MCE and that this bombardment is usual after getting quotes online from MCN. From what I've read, answering the phone makes no difference as you just get the sound of a call centre.

Learn from my mistake. If getting an online quote from MCN put in a false number. Or the number of an ex

[Paul-S]

Thanks for the heads up

[AlanH]

Ah, good old MCE...

One of my clients was bombarded with countless copies of a massive MCE promotional PDF over the course of a weekend rendering his email account entirely unusable. It turns out that one of the MCE staff had compiled a big list of email addresses, slapped all the addresses into the "To" field , attached a massive PDF and then hit send. Unfortunately, one of the email addresses was written incorrectly and this caused the server of one of the recipients to continually resend the email to all the recipients (a known Microsoft bug at the time). MCE blindly insisted that it must be malicious hacking and nothing whatsoever to do with them. It wasted a couple of hours of my time sorting out that little gem. They entirely failed to grasp the fact that if they hadn't disclosed my client's email address to all the others on their list without his permission, or if they had written all the email addresses without error, my client would not have had any issues.

The point? Well, it wouldn't surprise me to hear that they are equally inept when dealing with people by phone. Phone them back on 0800 0932013 to express your displeasure.

It's not just MCN they do this with. There are reports that MCE also bombard you with calls when you use moneysupermarket.com and comparethemarket.com

[alanvendy]

01933 351680 just down the road from me.

We're not all like that though.

Report them to OFTEL, all this unwanted and dead calls should have been reduced for this very reason.

Sorry that should be OFCOM.

[Mpj]

The point? Well, it wouldn't surprise me to hear that they are equally inept when dealing with people by phone. Phone them back on 0800 0932013 to express your displeasure.

It's not just MCN they do this with. There are reports that MCE also bombard you with calls when you use moneysupermarket.com and comparethemarket.com

Thanks for the tip. I'll be calling them along with trading standards. I'll watch out for money supermarket too.

[Mpj]

01933 351680 just down the road from me.

We're not all like that though.

Report them to OFTEL, all this unwanted and dead calls should have been reduced for this very reason.

Haha. Yeah I would hope you've better things to do than make annoying phone calls

[winxp-master]

Don't know if this is any good for this situation but if you haven't seen it then it's worth it.

TPS

[Whealie]

I don't know anything for certain about the MCN MCE deal but I do know the way it normally works. So the website owner (in this case MCN) invites tenders from various people to provide a quote engine. The people doing it are not the editor, who might decide to go for quality over price, but some publisher figure who has to make the biggest profit. They accept the offer that will pay them the most money.

The broker (in this case MCE) gets paid commission for each policy it sells. In order to pay some of that to MCN it has to cut corners. It automates as much as possible. That then reflects badly on both MCE and MCN.

And the thing is, that most of the journalists cannot even understand why people gte so upset because they do not have motorbike insurance of their own. Motorcycle journalists are not well paid, but they do get given free bikes all the time so have no need to own and insurer their own bikes. A small number do own and insure a personal bike but many do not.

So the last people to turn to for advice on motorbike insurance are people who don't have to pay it themselves.

[AlanH]

Don't know if this is any good for this situation but if you haven't seen it then it's worth it.

TPS

It stops legitimate law abiding businesses that cleanse their lists against the TPS register but the cowboys, scammers and everyone abroad ignores it - as do any businesses who believe you have consented to their call through an existing relationship (asking for a quote for example).

[Mpj]

Don't know if this is any good for this situation but if you haven't seen it then it's worth it.

TPS

Thank you. It's got some useful info on how to report those blasted automated calls which jam up your phoneline for 15 minutes (I manage to win competitions without entering them. Alas I've not managed that with the lottery).

Whealie- I take your post to mean that it's best not to ask you for advice that's unrelated to falling off or dropping a bike