Buyer Beware: online quote forms that require contact information
Most quote forms on “instant life insurance quotes” websites require you to enter your personal contact information (i.e email and phone) before you can see their quotes. The obvious reason is so that the company’s agents can follow-up with a sales call if you don’t follow through with applying for the quote.
But there is another reason, with far worse consequences to you. Half of these sites don’t actually sell life insurance. Instead, they make money purely off collecting your contact information. These sites, known as lead aggregators, collect your personal information as well as the details of your quote and sell it to brokers and agent who will then put you onto their sales target contact lists. Sure, you’ll get your free quote, but it will come packaged in a high-pressure sales pitch – and will likely cost you more because the quote you get will be the one that makes the sales agent the most money!
A real example
If you select 3 firms at random ranked in the top 20 search engine results for “term life insurance quotes” and provide your contact information, here is what you can expect over the course of the next month:
- 30 emails about buying term life insurance from 11 different sources.
- Over 40 phone calls from 15 different sources.
- The calls and emails to never stop.
The alternative: anonymous quotes
Now, in those top 20 search results there was only one that offered anonymous life insurance quotes, where contact information wasn’t required first. Unfortunately, it may take some clicking around to find a site like this – but it is well worth the time.
So to keep your personal contact information safe, follow these steps when looking online for life insurance quotes.
- Take a a quick glance at the quote form. If it asks for email and/or phone, make a hasty retreat.
- Keep going until you find a website where you can easily find your best deal available on insurance products and prices without ending up a victim to an unending stream of high-pressure sales calls and emails.
- Try Quality Term Life where it is easy to search and compare term life insurance quotes, entirely anonymously.
For an accurate quote, you will need to input date of birth, gender and state of rate calculation purposes, but you are never asked to provide your name, phone number, address, or email to just to get your quotes.