LoudmouthmanRunning for Cover.
I had an epiphany, the road to Damascus moment, when I realised that technology can finally bring me something which speaks to my own inherent laziness.
Like many in the UK I have to ensure that I am insured against loss, damage , crime and probably a multitude of other concerns which come with property ownership. This is an annual dirge for me since I really dislike the usuall hunt and peck of data location and completion for the online forms in order for a vendor of insurance to make me feel like I will be acceptable enough to cover. As a result I, like so many others, will usually just let a policy renew and continue paying for cover but not necessarily at the best price for myself but certainly an advantage for the insurer.
Along comes MyThingE with a method for searching for insurance which really appealled to me.
They take the idea of shopping for insurance and make me the customer. In place of me shopping and comparing quotes I have insurers bid for my business. To take a great idea and make it better they utilise a mechanism to reduce last minute snipe bidding by forcing an auction to open for a few hours more should a supplier place a last minute quote.
What makes MyThingE work for me is the concept that I can enter all my relevant insurance details once and keep them in my account on MyThingE. Whenever I need a quote for cover I can start the process by beginning an auction. The various suppliers providing cover then provide various quotes competing with each other !
This is “laziness 2.0” and its already made a big difference to my current costs for home cover.
In the interests of transparency I should point out that yes that is me on the Thank you page. My involvement with MyThingE has been to help Mark Harrison answer some key strategy and implementation issues relating to the core operating system which the MyThingE servers operate on, which is of course Ubuntu Server.
So thank you again Ubuntu and the Ubuntu community through your technology another business enters the market with a great idea and I can let my laziness work for me.
Thanks for reading.
Wow – sounds like a really useful tool. And I _love_ the anti-sniping idea – absolutely brilliant. They really need that on eBay.
The anti sniping measure reminds me of the way auctions worked on Cix back in the day. You’d set an auction up to expire ‘”N” hours/days after the last bid’, not ‘”N” hours/days after the start of the auction’. This did mean that it could get to be a lengthy protracted auction. If someone set one up to have 48 hours between the end of the last bid and the end, all it would take is a minimum incremental bid every 47 hours and 59 mins to make the auction last for weeks. Still, it was far better than the Ebay way of doing things.
Ahh, now see – i’m even lazier – I don’t have any insurance. The last 2 things i had insurance for welched when I tried to claim so I don’t see the point any more.