

Leaky (YC S11) Relaunches with Real-Time Price Updates - jasontraff
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/26/leaky-relaunch/

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dangrossman
The fact that I pay substantially less for my insurance than anything Leaky
quotes me is actually disconcerting.

I got my policy through an independent agent that came recommended by a
relative. They set me up with Travelers for my home and car. My auto policy
for a 2009 Nissan Altima with comprehensive and collision coverage is only
$800 per year. The lowest quote from Leaky was about $650 per 6 months, or
$1300 per year.

I've looked through the actual policy documents for my coverage and the limits
all look the same as when I was with Geico paying twice as much. Now I wonder
if I'll find out there's some kind of mistake and I'm not actually covered if
I get into an accident. The discount for having multiple policies with the
same company is usually 10%, so that doesn't explain the 60% difference.

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jasontraff
Hey Dan, sounds like you're getting a good deal! As for Leaky, the prices we
show are based on switching/new customers - so there are longevity discounts
and multi-line discounts (such as insuring your home) that aren't included in
our current prices.

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swalsh
This is the best website i've ever searched for insurance on! The lack of spam
alone is a major selling point, but in addition to that, its quick, and
snappy. Quite the amazing job. Also, you just saved me $100 on insurance... so
my opinion may be biased :D

It would be nice if you integrated with CarWoo, so while I search for my car I
can see how my insurance will change.

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gcb
i never searched on anything else than the providers website before.

if they agreed on a naming convention for their forms elements so autocomplete
would work on all sites, they would take out every agregator out of business.

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vaksel
I don't think they are out of woods yet. They are still reliant on the
insurance companies for their revenue(essentially they are just an affiliate
site)...so they've complied with the letter of the complaint, but not the
spirit.

They are still doing something that insurance companies care enough about to
shut them down over.

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latortuga
I don't really think that's something to be worried about. Millions of
insurance agents are reliant on insurance companies for their revenue - I
don't see how this is any different.

As far as just being an affiliate site, you seem to overlook the fact that
there is currently no way for consumers to price-compare different insurance
companies without going through an agent. This is huge and I'm willing to bet
they're hard at work on expanding into the even more lucrative homeowners
insurance space as well.

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accountoftheday
I am willing to bet that prices being only comparable through an agent is
completely intentional on the side of the insurance companies.

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sgrove
Talk about tenacity! And there's such a huge amount of disruption to be had
anywhere in the insurance industries - looking forward to them earning the
'hipmunk for insurance' title.

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phillco
I enjoyed that the prices refreshed (though they did not change) when I
entered my first name. I could imagine: "Oh, your name's Phillip? +$30/year."

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tibbon
A huge (multiple million policies) missing market that no one is covering here
is motorcycle coverage. Almost every site caters to car insurance, but no one
touches bikes.

Opportunity for someone for sure.

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joering2
care to elaborate, pls?

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tibbon
I have multiple motorcycles. I'd like to buy insurance for them (already
covered, but I wouldn't mind price shopping). Nearly all websites like this
cater to finding you a better price on coverage for a newer car. I have a 30+
year old motorcycle and a 2 year old motorcycle. If there was a site that made
it so I could find a cheaper (and better) insurance policy, I'd be totally up
for it.

One key point here is 'better' as well- not just cheaper. If the insurer is
likely to triple my premium after a claim, and another would only increase it
by 10%, then I'd rather have the latter.

Kinda like Hipmunk- not just about the flight price purely, but the agony
involved in flying that trip. No use on saving $5 on a ticket, only to need to
spend 12 hours and 3 meals in an airport on layover, or stuck at an airport
that will always leave me stranded with cancelations.

I doubt this is a 300 billion dollar business (it isn't), but I can only
imagine there's enough money in this to employ a few dozen people and make
real money.

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DavidAdams
I've never found a company whose motorcycle coverage came even close to being
as cheap as Geico's. So there's your comparison right there :-)

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dfragnito
Geico offers all new cars extended warranty for 30/year. 7 years 100k miles,
250 deductible. This caused me to go with Geico, they also have very
inexpensive road side assistance. $20/year for two vehicles. It would be nice
if these types of add-ons are also included in the comparison.

Dealers hate Geico extended warranty. They try very hard to not let you talk
to the Geico rep, because they want to sell you an outrageously priced
extended warranty.

I had a bad experience with a Nissan Sentar (motor went at 90 k miles) and was
looking into extended warranty for my next new car purchase. The Dealer tried
to add the new car to my Geico policy without me talking to the Geico rep.
Geico will not insure a vehicle with out talking to the owner. I ended up
driving the car (2011 Chevy Cruze) off the lot without insurance (very long
story).

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AznHisoka
Not to sound like that guy.. but I'm skeptical of their model.

Normal price comparison sites make a ton of money.. why? because they dominate
the search results. Makes sense.. hard to make a brand out of something that
sounds boring like comparing prices. Yet I think Leaky is betting the brand
will attract users.

And if they do acknowledge they'll need search engine visitors, then that's a
huge risk because 1 penalty and they're dead. And where's the "thick" content?
Google frowns upon any site that looks like thin content.

Second, this is insurance. Noone's gonna compare prices regularly, like they
do with regular purchases. It's not like airline tickets where people buy them
3-4 times a year either. It sounds like something someone would use once, then
forget for a long time.

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krelian
You are looking at this from the point of view of what's currently in the
market - insurance affiliates who compete on who can better game Google. There
is no reason why Leaky should get a penalty, they are in the insurance
comparison business, not the SEO business.

While many people (I don't know if most people) buy more plane tickets than
they do insurance, when it comes to commission, the insurance market is more
lucrative than the airline ticket market. Airlines pay very little for every
ticket sold.

If Google does it's job right (which I agree it doesn't always do) than if
Leaky is the best online insurance comparison site than it will be the first
result for that search term. I don't think Leaky should be worrying about this
at the moment. The way the site currently works is how most visitors would
want it to work, clean, fast and intuitive.

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AznHisoka
They are in both businesses. Without SEO, Leaky is going nowhere in the long-
term. And to us, Leaky may seem like the best insurance comparison site, but
if you don't have thick, valuable content (that can be crawled by search
engines, you aren't going to be found.

Also, google "TeachStreet Panda". This was a site you could've said the same
thing. "No way they should be penalized"... they went out of business after
Panda because Google deemed their content to be non-valuable even though it
filled a need.

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webjprgm
I almost was part of a startup (which we were going to submit to YC) that did
exactly the same thing. We were trying to negotiate with providers of
insurance comparison quotes to get the data, with web scraping as a backup
precisely because I knew the insurance companies would not like us scraping
their sites. We were not able to make our data deals go through, and so the
only option left would be exactly what Leaky is doing now: compute from the
publicly available data. We did not feel we could do a good job of that at the
time and that combined with other reasons caused our efforts to fall apart.
(This was 2010, though we'd tossed the idea around since 2008 I believe.)

Anyway, I get what Leaky is going through and also the need for a product like
theirs in the industry.

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krelian
The insurance market is very lucrative. It's up there with gambling and loans.
There are so many insurance quotes affiliate sites who do nothing but blackhat
google so they can get their useless site on top. I say useless because these
sites can't really offer you the insurance rates comparison that they promise,
they do not have the data. They are just in it to collect your details and
pass them over to an insurance agent.

I used to run sites like these and it was frustrating because there isn't much
you can to differentiate yourself from the competition.

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ShabbyDoo
Thinking more generally than just insurance, there are a lot of things I buy
on a recurring basis which, if I just allow my current providers to have their
way with me, tend to get more and more expensive over time. Lawn weed
control/fertilizing is the example which comes immediately to mind. I'd love
to set-up a profile of my lawn with a site which would then allow providers to
quote me prices for services semi-continuously. This would keep my current
provider in check.

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muhfuhkuh
A "dating" service for your home. So brilliant that you shouldn't have given
it away here :)

Plug in your particulars (house/room sq. footage, number of rooms, number of
doors and windows, if it's on a hill, the acreage of your yard, soil type,
etc.) and have companies compete on services ranging from exterior painting to
mowing and tree planting to powerwashing to deck work to carpet shampooing.

No estimates, no (total) surprises, no upcharge. Do work, pay bill (or release
escrow hold),happy home.

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kirpekar
Here is what I'd like from a service (like this):

I submit my insurance profile/needs (cars, bikes, boats, RVs, home, life,
disability and umbrella). Your service checks for a combination deal every
month and emails me if a better deal is out there.

I buy insurance for many things and auto is only one of them. Usually I use
the same company for all/most policies because of the combination discounts
and the less hassle in dealing with multiple companies.

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bengl3rt
I've always wondered if YC would fund ideas that were based on scraping (like
this one) and therefore liable to receive this sort of letter at any time

Now I know! Usually there is _some_ sanctioned way to get at the data that
you're scraping, but it's impossibly expensive. Looking at you, ATPCO... (raw
airline fare data)

Kudos to these guys for sticking with their idea and finding another way to
feed it data!

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tapertaper
The deals in insurance don't come when an insurer follows its filings
religiously. They come when insurers make a big move for market share and max
out their deviations from manual/filed rates, which vary by state.

This happens infrequently, unpredictably and, sometimes, for short periods of
time. Real shoppers are probably still better off going direct.

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ShabbyDoo
I spent a few years working for a P&C insurance company. The most valuable
variable for determining the expected value of future claims (and therefore
one which significantly impacts price) is one's credit score. That Leaky is
quoting without knowing my credit score means that the rates provided can't be
terribly accurate.

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jtap
Hey Jason, I worked at a company called Comparison Market that later bought
Insurance.com between 2002 to 2008. I might be of some help to you, and if you
have any questions about pretty much anything in that industry my email is in
my profile.

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Sreddy
If you want to compare real quotes coming directly from the insurance
companies you should check out Answer Financial (www.answerfinancial.com).
We're a national auto and home insurance agency that represents over 20
insurance carriers. You can compare quotes and buy online or over the phone
with an insurance agent. We do this via direct XML connections into the
insurance companies we've contracted with.

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jayzee
Fascinating! The real time aspect is actually fun to play with.

It allows you to probe the black-box and see what comes out the other end. For
example, I would be saying a lot of money if I were a married 60 year old
woman called Mary. But I guess we all knew that!

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duaneb
Congratulations, looks good. It didn't appear to have information for my zip-
code (01267), but I was able to play around with pricing and get an estimate
(which is frighteningly high for a 20 year old male).

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pclark
These companies are the only way anyone buys insurance in England. Fantastic
businesses that make tons of money.

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rdl
This is a pretty awesome hack.

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jamest
Great work guys!

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rorrr
I just tried it, and it quoted me double of what I'm paying.

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gcb
their drop downs bugs made me give up halfway.

doesn't help that they were $1.300+ off real quotes either.

