San Diego Medical Insurance Quotes – Know When to Run From Rogue Websites
Friday, December 16th, 2011Rogue health insurance websites are set up to capture personal information from people trying to get instant quotes, and then the websites sell that information to agents. In the results from 2 Google searches for “Pregnancy Health Insurance” and “Maternity Insurance Plans,” almost 50% of the top 20 results were rogue websites. There are plenty of legitimate health insurance websites to choose from, but you need to be able to distinguish the good from the bad. When you click the “Get Quote” button on rogue websites, you are essentially telling them, “Please have 5-10 medical insurance agents call me for the next 8 weeks to sell me a policy,” and “Please sell my email address to other list services and health insurance agents so I can receive their emails.” I’ll show you how to recognize these websites before they deceive you.
Ten years ago I left the corporate world to start a business of my own. I knew I need to get health insurance for my family so I searched online for Medical Insurance California. I clicked one of the top links and read some information of the website and saw that I could get instant San Diego health insurance quotes by filling out their quote request form, so I did. When I hit the “Submit” button to get the quotes, I was taken to a generic page that said I would be contacted by 5-8 agents that would provide my instant quotes. Twenty seconds later my phone started ringing, and for over 2 months I got daily phone calls from agents trying to sell me health insurance. The junk emails were actually worse because they never stopped and seemed to multiply as time went by. I eventually had to get a new email address (this was before spam filters).
As a result of that experience I learned the telltale signs of rogue websites and can now recognize them quickly. Here is the list of red flags to watch for:
1. Google insurance ads on the website – legitimate California health insurance brokers wouldn’t display competitive ads on their websites. 2. You see links for “Agents” or “Brokers” on the website – the website is going to sell your contact info to the agents that sign up to use the website’s services. Look through ALL the links, bottom, top, and sides of the webpage. 3. Check the privacy policy to determine if they are going to give your personal information to third parties – they have to tell you they will do this in order to be able to sell your information to agents or email services. 4. Look to see if the website displays an insurance license number (this is commonly at the bottom of the page) – if no license the website could be a rogue or a national company that won’t be as familiar with the details of the California health insurance market. 5. Scan for the following text, or something similar, “this website provides a free service and is not an insurer or agent/broker” – this is a marketing website that will sell your personal information or send you to a national broker for a referral fee.
If none of the above red flags show up, and you decide to begin filling out the quote request form to get a California Medical Insurance quote, you need to look out for 3 more red flags before submitting your information:
6. Check the Disclaimer at the bottom of the quote request page to see if the website is going to have agents call you. 7. The quote request form requires your home address – This is not necessary to provide a quote, but will result in you getting junk in your mail box. 8. The form asks for the best time to contact you – this definitely means that agents will be calling you.
If you find any of the above red flags you should close the page; your information won’t be saved as long as you don’t hit the final “Submit” button on the quote request form page.
Rogue San Diego health insurance websites are pretty common on the internet, and tend to show up in longer keyword searches. To avoid becoming a phone and email spam victim you need to be careful to ensure you are working with a legitimate San Diego Medical Insurance website. The signs to look for are Google Insurance Ads, Agent/Broker links, no insurance license, bad privacy policies, the disclaimer, or text that says the website is not an insurer or a broker. Following these precautions will help you keep your personal information safe.
Tim T writes about the important things in the insurance industry. For information on San Diego Medical Insurance visit SPF Insurance. While there, get fast health insurance quotes California without hassle.. Also published at San Diego Medical Insurance Quotes – Know When to Run From Rogue Websites.