Product Trends Magazine

About InsureMe: Getting quotes on car insurance, medical insurance, home insurance and more has never been easier. With our free service, enter your information once and you are instantly matched with the most competitive companies in the business. You’ll get back up to five quotes so you can compare and save.  At InsureMe.com, we shop your insurance so you don’t have to.

The big pitch: When you want a complete picture of the best health insurance, auto insurance, medical insurance and home insurance rates available to you, fill out our form now. You’ll find the insurance you need at a great rate.
InsureMe is one of many websites devoted to the business of health insurance, life insurance, business insurance, car insurance and long term care coverage that tell you they’ll get you a great rate, but in reality send your business to other providers.We don’t have any great problem with that, let’s be clear. There are many websites out there that will do a fine job of helping you find the lowest rate possible, after taking your details and figuring out the specifics. The catch here is that, when we tried it, we were only given one option, and no quote. If we wanted an  ‘online quote’, we were told to hit a button which took us elsewhere.

Now, let’s be very up-front about this - InsureMe.com is not a scam. They do what they claim, and help you find better insurance than what you might have, but with all the information they ask for, we expected a little more from the result.

Perhaps it was just our case where the options were one - perhaps you’ll get a whole page of options. But it wasn’t like we were asking for something that is difficult to find a lot of options on… health insurance for a 35 year old in New Jersey. We would have expected at least a dozen options, with prices. And we got one.

So, in reality, if you’re looking for something simple, where an insurer will call you with the relevant details later in the day and you don’t have to do much thinking about it all, InsureMe.com is a good option. But if you’re looking to  shop around a little…

The Product Trends rating: 2.5 stars. In the end, we expected to have a list of options and prices, and all we really got was the name of an agent who will probably be calling us real soon. That’s not a bad thing, per se,  InsureMe.com is a good option, but there are other insurance services out there that we’ve got more out of.

About the company: "Obtaining and comparing insurance quotes can be grueling. First, you have to call each insurance company you’re interested in, give them all of your personal information, and record the quotes they give you. Then, you have to sit down and compare each quote to find your best offer. Finally, you have to call your chosen company again in order to apply for insurance coverage. However, shopping for insurance doesn’t have to be this time-consuming. With Kanetix.ca, Canadians can get insurance quotes from up to 33 different companies by filling out just one personal information form. With so many quotes from just one inquiry, you can save yourself the hassle of devoting an entire day to shopping for insurance, and you can be sure that you’re getting XXXthe best deal possible."

The big pitch: Get Multiple Quotes. Compare Quotes Side-By-Side. Shop Anytime.

Kanetix.ca provides their customers with quotes for several different types of insurance, including auto, critical illness, term life, motorcycle, property, and travel. Additionally, the site also offers valuable information for people who are unsure what insurance coverage they need. This means that before you shop for insurance, you can use their tools to determine exactly what you need to shop for.

If you’re shopping for auto insurance, Kanetix provides calculators that help you determine exactly how much coverage you need. If you’re shopping for critical illness, term life, motorcycle, property, or travel insurance, they provide guides that explain the different types of coverage available to you.

It costs nothing to use Kanetix’s services. You will not be charged anything, and you are under no obligation to purchase any of the quoted insurance plans you are provided with. When you’ve decided what type of insurance coverage you need, you simply enter your personal information into their quote form. The site is secure, so you don’t have to worry about your personal information being intercepted by third-parties. When you’ve finished, you’ll receive your quotes from Kanetix’s affiliate insurance companies.

After you’ve received your quotes, you can compare them side-by-side. If you find one that you wish to purchase, you simply do one of three things: call the number listed, submit a request for information form, or apply online. The method of purchasing insurance varies depending on the capabilities of the insurance company you choose.

There are a lot of online companies that promise to deliver insurance quotes from several companies. However, most often these companies simply direct you to the website of one "preferred" company. This is not how Kanetix operates. They give you quotes from each of their affiliate insurance companies. A list of these insurance companies is available on their website.

The product trends rating: Kanetix.ca is a valuable, time-saving tool for anyone in Canada who is shopping for an insurance quote. By providing both insurance tools and quotes to shoppers, their services are not matched by any other Canadian-based website. Five stars.

To try Kanetix.ca for yourself, click the button below:

About the company: “The American Life Direct website is owned and operated by Spectrum Direct Insurance Services, Inc. We are a life insurance sales and marketing organization whose products are entirely Internet-based and designed to enable the purchase and management of policies online.”

The big pitch: Buy up to $150,000 of Term Life Insurance in just 10 minutes! No medical exam. Instant approval. Print policy in minutes. Immediate coverage for qualified applicants. Get a quote in seconds. No cost. No Obligation.

The website at http://www.americanlifedirect.com is an online tool that will help you find the term life insurance you need. You can start by getting a free life insurance quote. In order to determine your life insurance quote, www.americanlifedirect.com, asks you for the state you live in, gender, birth date, and if you smoke or use any nicotine related substances. You plug in this information and receive a quote via your email address. It is quick, free way to obtain a life insurance quote.

American Life Direct will provide you with life insurance without a medical exam and approves qualified applicants in a flash. A medical exam is one of the time consuming hassles that can be avoided when purchasing a life insurance policy from this company.

This sounds too easy. What are the components of the life insurance policies? You can be approved for up a life insurance policy up to $150,000. After you are approved and have made your first payment you have 30 days in which to decide if the plan is right for you. You can cancel your policy within this timeframe for a full refund.

Your policy will be in effect starting after approval and acceptance of first payment. You can purchase your life insurance policy online without the hassle of long forms and pressure from insurance agents. You can apply in the comfort of your own home.

What about the rates? Will they change? No, your rates will remain the same as they were when you were approved for the life insurance policy. The rates will remain at this level for the duration of the policy term you picked. Your benefits will remain the same for the duration of the in-force status of the policy.

Another benefit of using www.americanlifedirect.com is that you can access your account information online. This allows you to access your account anytime day or night. This digital format and flexibility can alleviate the hassle of dealing with excess paperwork.

The Product Trends rating: American Life Direct can provide you with a free life insurance quote within minutes. The advantages include not having to spend time taking a medical exam and dealing with insurance agents. Four stars. —Reviewed by Jillian Dobbs

To try American Life Direct insurance for yourself, click the image below:

About the company: Travel Guard International is the industry’s leading travel insurance provider - covering more than 6 million travelers worldwide each year. Their travel insurance plans offer coverage for vacation and trip cancellation, travel interruptions and delays, emergency medical and health expenses, lost baggage and more. Plus, every Travel Guard insurance plan includes a 24-hour "911" travel emergency service for urgent medical assistance, last-minute or emergency travel and flight changes, lost luggage tracking, pre-trip travel advice, and more.

The big pitch: With every Travel Guard insurance plan you will also receive 24-hour travel assistance.

When I was six months pregnant, my husband and I were celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary when we decided to take what we thought would be our last trip together as a couple before our baby. Hours before we were supposed to leave, I started having contractions, forcing us to cancel our airline tickets, our hotel reservations, and in the end, it cost us a lot of money. Little did I know that had we held a travel insurance policy, we could have been protected from loss.

Travel Guard offers policies catered to your needs as a traveler. They sell coverage for cruises, international travel, single trips, flights, students, travel medical insurance, and annual policies. The company also offers 24-hour protection and assistance for a number of problems that can occur while traveling.

The two biggest risks that travelers can incur are the costs of canceling or changing travel plans and medical care during your trip. Travel Guard not only covers these issue, but they seem to have the broadest scope of coverage in the industry.

The Wall Street Journal recently said, “In the future, you might consider buying insurance to cover the cost of canceling hotel or rental accommodations because the property is uninhabitable. Travel Guard of Stevens Point, Wis., offers such insurance at a cost between 5% and 7% of the trip’s total value.”

Moreover, the 24-hour hotline, with live people answering, is a real plus. While other companies offer similar plans, they don’t all offer this nifty extra. One problem with the policy, however, is that they have a strike list posted on their web site. The policy does not offer coverage if an airline on their list goes on strike during your vacation time. As much as this is annoying, it is, however, a standard practice in the industry.

It is important, when purchasing this travel insurance, to decide how much coverage you truly need. Consider all possibilities, then decide if the cost of the policy is actually worth it if those issues crop up during your vacation. And when you decide that travel insurance is for you, Travel Guard International should be your first stop.

The Product Trends rating: Four stars. This company offers very reliable customer service and fast claims. If you’re interested in travel insurance, this is certainly the way to go. –- Reviewed by Mindy Matter

To try Travel Guard International for yourself, click the image below:

About the company:"Over half a million people have trusted Esurance with their auto insurance coverage. That’s because, along with our commitment to quality customer service, our insurance credentials ensure that you have coverage you can count on. Esurance is rated A (Excellent) by A.M. Best, a leading, independent rating organization. Our corporate parent provides extensive industry know-how and financial stability, so you know we’ll be there for you when you need us."

The big pitch: 24/7 customer service, instant online approval and proof of insurance, save hundreds on your auto insurance today!

One of the beautiful things about the internet is that it has the ability to make many of the tasks that used to take us months, happen instantaneously. Or at least, it should. Yet, oddly, many car insurance companies still work the old-fashioned way, asking you to bring or fax in copious copies of forms and applications so they can take weeks figuring out your rate. But not everyone is slow off the mark when it comes to taking full advantage of the online world for insurance, and at Esurance, they’re forging a big reputation by making things fast, simple, and pretty darn cheap.

When you click the Esurance link and go to their main page, you won’t find a dazzling variety of options and animations… you just find one single box. Put your zip code in it and hit ‘next’. Congratulations, you’re one step closer to getting your automobile insured!

But while there’s precious little to confuse you about Esurance’s front page, don’t be fooled - there are LOADS of options under the surface, but the way Esurance works the process is that they only ask you what they need to, while allowing you to make alterations to your policy AFTER you get your quote, to bring it down in price, or to fit in with your budget.

We found this to be an insanely clever, simple, non-confusing move. We simply gave our name, date of birth, how many cars, how many drivers, etc - about a minute of easy information entering - and we were looking at a comparison screen with four different company quotes on offer.

Now, let’s be clear here - Esurance’s estimate was NOT the cheapest deal listed. In fact, it was the second most expensive out of the four rates shown, with another company coming in at less than half of the price of Esurance, but the fact remains that every single policy has so many variables that, while this company wasn’t in the ballpark on our first test quote, it was the cheapest by far when we tried it for a second quote on another car.

What we love about Esurance is how quickly it cuts through the crap and gave us full control of our policy. By tweaking factors after the quote was given, such as bodily injury limits and additional personal injury protection, and by lowering our property damage limit and raising our collision coverage deductible, we knocked a hundred bucks off the 6-monthly cost of a policy.

When we decided we were ready to buy, that too was simple - just enter your personal details, such as driver’s license numbers etc, and then print off the proof of insurance, and that’s it!

Esurance is absolutely a good starting point whenever you need auto coverage. They may not give you the lowest quote, but they will allow you to figure out ways to reduce your rate, and they’re open and honest enough to show you what their competitors will charge, which you simply have to love.

The Product Trends rating: Esurance gets a big four stars. An absolute pleasure to work with.

To try Esurance for yourself, click the image below:

About the company: Getting quotes on car insurance, medical insurance, home insurance and more has never been easier. With our free service, enter your information once and you are instantly matched with the most competitive companies in the business. You’ll get back up to five quotes so you can compare and save. At InsureMe.com, we shop your insurance so you don’t have to.

The big pitch: When you want a complete picture of the best health insurance, auto insurance, medical insurance and home insurance rates available to you, fill out our form now. You’ll find the insurance you need at a great rate.

InsureMe is one of many websites devoted to the business of health insurance, life insurance, business insurance, car insurance and long term care coverage that tell you they’ll get you a great rate, but in reality send your business to other providers.

We don’t have any great problem with that, let’s be clear. There are many websites out there that will do a fine job of helping you find the lowest rate possible, after taking your details and figuring out the specifics. The catch here is that, when we tried it, we were only given one option, and no quote. If we wanted an ‘online quote’, we were told to hit a button which took us elsewhere.

Now, let’s be very up-front about this - InsureMe.com is not a scam . They do what they claim, and help you find better insurance than what you might have, but with all the information they ask for, we expected a little more from the result.

Perhaps it was just our case where the options were one - perhaps you’ll get a whole page of options. But it wasn’t like we were asking for something that is difficult to find a lot of options on… health insurance for a 35 year old in New Jersey. We would have expected at least a dozen options, with prices. And we got one.

So, in reality, if you’re looking for something simple, where an insurer will call you with the relevant details later in the day and you don’t have to do much thinking about it all, InsureMe.com is a good option. But if you’re looking to shop around a little…

The Product Trends rating: 2.5 stars. In the end, we expected to have a list of options and prices, and all we really got was the name of an agent who will probably be calling us real soon. That’s not a bad thing, per se, InsureMe.com is a good option, but there are other insurance services out there that we’ve got more out of.

To try InsureMe.com for yourself, click the image below:

About the company: FindMyInsurance.com is a pioneer in instant term life insurance quotation services with over 300 products from top-rated affordable life insurance companies. We can provide you with a free life insurance quote as well as provide a wide range of insurance information to make an informed decision.

The big pitch: Our free insurance rate comparison service gives you access to over 550 low cost life insurance policies from over 175 top-rated life insurance companies to provide you with the best insurance rate prices in the country. Get an easy term life insurance quote online!

One of the hardest things about reviewing insurance options is that there are so many different features, add-ons, extra charges, deductibles and fees, that you really don’t have much of a clue whether you’re getting a good deal until you have to claim.

FindMyInsurance.com changes the landscape a little when it comes to figuring out the cost of life insurance, by bringing together over 550 low-cost life insurance policies from 175 of the best-rated insurance companies in North America.

FindMyInsurance.com keeps things really simple - all you need to do is fill in your date of birth, home state, your gender, whether or not you smoke, your health classification (we’ll talk you through this), the level term period you’re looking for, the coverage amount you’d like, and your email address. All told, this process took us less than one minute, and the FindMyInsurance.com policy database gave us a full page of different policy options, ranging from $407 per year with Protective Life Insurance Company, all the way down to $266 with West Coast Life Insurance’s ‘Golden Guarantee’ 15-year program.

Learning your health classification is easy enough - simply look over the information provided by FindMyInsurance.com, and you can determine what category you fit in - preferred plus, preferred, or standard.

The difference between them is pretty simple - if you’re overweight, you’re on the standard plan. If you’re a good weight but engage in the occasional dangerous activity, or have a history of medical issues in the family, you’ll end up on preferred. If you’re a clean living fool with no reason to die - then you’re on preferred plus, and you’ll save a packet of cash on your policy.

What makes FindMyInsurance.com worth a look is that they don’t assume that everyone qualifies for preferred plus coverage, like some of their competitors. Preferred plus policies are far cheaper, and so some companies advertise a rate that, in reality 80-90% of customers won’t qualify for.

The Product Trends rating:
FindMyInsurance.com plays it squarely, and keeps things simple. They’ll help you find a good policy, and they’ll do it quickly and easily. For that, we give them a hearty recommendation, and four stars.

To try FindMyInsurance.com for yourself, click the image below:

About the company: "21st Century Auto Insurance is the seventh largest personal auto insurance company in California and insures over 1.5 million automobiles. 21st Century Insurance offers personal automobile, motorcycle, and umbrella insurance in California and automobile insurance in Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Washington. The company receives much of its new business through referrals from current policyholders; the average annual renewal rate of existing policyholders is over 90%."

The big pitch: 21st Century says their customers "report average savings of $200 on car insurance."

Many auto insurers claim they’ll insure you online, that their rates are cheaper, and that they give you more, but the reality is that’s not always the case. We ran the rule over 21st Century Auto Insurance this past week to see what their level of service, attention to detail and fairness was like, as well as price, and we were pleasantly surprised.

First of all, the company’s website is very easy to use, which makes the process of getting a quote from them extremely simple. Just enter your zipcode and hit "go", and the system asks you a few questions, none of which we found too intrusive or hard to answer.

In fact, within 90 seconds of clicking "go", we had a quote for six months of insurance at $485. Compared to others we’ve tried, that’s a very reasonable price, but the process of getting to that price was ridiculously easy and stress-free.

Granted, if we want to go from that quote to actually setting up a policy, it gets more in-depth. You need to have your auto registration, license, existing policies, details of other drivers who will be covered etc - but for the quote itself, you need none of that. Just a zip code and a few vague details of your situation, like the make and model of your car, and how long it has been since your last accident.

Of course, we recommend that before taking out an insurance policy on anything, with anyone, you go through the details with a fine-toothed comb, but our experience with the 21st Century Auto Insurance has been, to this point, a total breeze.

The Product Trends Rating: On ease of use, price, reputation and simplicity, we give 21st Century Auto Insurance a 4-star rating. It would be nice if they covered more parts of North America, but if you live in California, Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas or Washington state, this company is well worth a look.

To try 21st Century Auto Insurance for yourself and receive a free quote in 90 seconds, click the image below: