Some people are under the mistaken impression that all they need to do in order to secure accurate auto insurance quotes is to get online, go to the websites of all the auto insurance companies that are of interest to them, fill out the online forms to get their quotes, and then be done with the entire process.

Actually, however, this is only a portion of the process. While it is certainly true that this is a perfectly fine way to start the process of getting auto insurance quotes, in order to make sure that your quotes are truly accurate you will want to follow up on this initial step with phone calls to each of the insurance companies of the most interest to you. This way, when you place these phone calls, you are going in “armed” with some preliminary auto insurance quotes information that may not be totally accurate, but which is probably a pretty good approximation.

You can then say to the customer service representative who answers the phone that you have already inputted your personal information into their online forms to secure an initial auto insurance quote. However, you now want to confirm that the quote you received at the end of that process is indeed an accurate (or at least close to accurate) one. At this point, the customer service rep will be able to completely confirm the quote you received online or provide you with a slightly modified quote.

You will want to repeat this process with all of the insurance companies that interest you. These phone calls are important for several reasons. For starters, you want to assure yourself that the people who work for these companies are diligent, competent, polite and professional. After all, you don’t want to be working with rude people or amateurs. In addition, you may want to negotiate with them about the quotes that they provide for you. One way to negotiate is to let them know if you have received better auto insurance quotes elsewhere. Sometimes, if you simply provide the insurance agent with this critical piece of information, he or she might be willing to negotiate right away. Other times, they might hem and haw or simply say no.

No matter how these phone calls go, don’t make your final decision right away. After all, you are still in the "fact finding" or "information gathering phase." It is only after you have placed all of these phone calls (and any follow up phone calls as needed) that you will want to analyze all the facts that you have gathered from this entire process.

Price is a major consideration, of course, but you will also want to factor in how accurate the online auto insurance quotes were compared to the quotes you received by phone, how you were treated by the various insurance agents (because this is an indicator of how you will be treated if there is ever a problem or an accident and you really need their help at any point), how willing they were to negotiate with you (if negotiations were in fact necessary), and any other factors that happen to be of special importance to you.