At Bel-Air direct, we know you are going to shop for car insurance, so we make it simple, by providing five quotes from the competition.

Isn't that so nice of them?

I work for an insurance company, but this isn't about competition, it's about marketing to the general public.

You go on their website, they want to 'help' you out by not having you to give information a number of times, so they will give you a quote from their competition.

Each insurance company, in Canada anyway, needs to submit rules for whom they will and will not insure and they may actually even submit the price factor.

So, say I am Bel-Air and can reasonably predict your companies premium and I put it in a chart, from lowest to highest

Company 1 $513.00
Company 2 $535.00
Company 3 $565.00
Company 4 $570.00
Company 5 $592.00
Company 6 $606.00
Company 7 $612.00
Company 8 $615.00
Company 9 $631.00
Company 10 $668.00
Company 11 $702.00

Say Bel-air direct is company #4 and have car insurance for you at $570.00.
Of these 5 competitive quotes they will provide you to give you piece of mind, which one would you give your customer?

Yeah, #s 5, 7, 8, 10, 11.

If you have to pick 5, you are going to want the ones that either have a bad name or are more expensive. Unless they don't want you as a customer anyway, in which case they are going to give you the cheaper ones.

It's not like it's illegal, they are offering you exactly what they are claiming, but boy, are they banking on some lazy customers here.

Customer "So, how much is it to repair my car?"
Mechanic "$1400 buddy"
Customer "ok, I am going to take it to another shop and price comparison"
Mechanic "You don't have to, we already did it for you, Speedy was $1500., Acme was $1650 and National Car gaugers were $1900"
Customer "wow, what a great service, I don't need to shop around then. You are saving me time and money"
Manager and accountant start to giggle in the background

Meanwhile, the car could have cost you $1100 at Firestone in Pickering, ask for Darryl (truly, I have an awesome mechanic, you don't even need to shop around, but if you did, you would still go back there.

Get out of your technological funk and enjoy the outdoors.

In our age of technology, where parents IM their kids to say it's time for supper and mindless electronic entertainment is draining our lives, Canada's Wonderland wants you to spend family time at their park.

Their ad is good and hits home. They want you to enjoy the family aspect.
However, the positive of what they are trying to convey is outweighed from the negative experience I had with Canada's Wonderland and he makes me laugh at the value they 'place' on family.

Last year, my daughter, 10 at the time, and her mother were going to be off for the entire summer, so it made sense that they got a season's pass to Toronto's biggest amusement park.
Early in the calendar year, we had made it contingent on her getting grades that reflected effort. Not necessarily A's, but effort.

Now, for Wonderland, the prices are cheaper before the park opens and goes up in May. My daughter was doing well, so we bought 2 season passes and a parking pass.

Grades show up and arrrrgggg, not very good in a number of subjects. But we have already bought these passes.

Being the good parents we are (we have an EXTREMELY amazing 3 parent system) we can't possibly reward her for this.
So, her mom contacts Wonderland to a 'there's nothing we can do, you bought them'.

I am a bit better at pushing the envelope, trying to show them the pluses to making this situation a win-win, so I call.

Explaining that we don't want a refund, could we get the tickets for next year?? No, you can't was the reply.
With the hundreds of thousands that take in this park, surely $200 is not going to make a dent. "It's policy"

Ok, how bout you let me speak to a supervisor then.
You see, the way I would look at it, is if you do this, you have my money, I am just moving my visits from one year to another. If you say no, and I stick to my guns about my child raising, then you cost me $200 and give me no value. Would that make you want to 'shop' again.

Supervisor says we can sell it if we haven't used it (sell it to whom). To friends or something.
Ok, so, if someone hasn't bought one now, what would compel them to buy one now?

Explained how it could look to customers and she didn't care. You bought it already, we won't notice if you use it or not. And the truth is they won't, they won't even notice if I come back ever again.

So, it goes to waste.
The following year, since I bought on line, I get the email spam for this year's season pass.
So, I replied to the email saying there is no way in hell I will ever go there again if you didn't care about me enough, as a customer, to defer your profit for the sake of child rearing.

The response??? Nothing of course.

This year, we had our company picnic at Canada's wonderland including cheap passes for family.
ahh, no, won't be going.

So, when I hear the commercials valuing 'family time', I just have to laugh. Of course they don't care about the family unit, they care about the turnstiles.

It's a shame really, they had the easy task of creating a positive memorable experience and they did the opposite.

Sure, they may miss out on a couple of hundred dollars, maybe even a thousand over my life time, but money and reputation is no match for consistent, non-veering policy decisions, does it?

After all, if you can't handle all possible situations by a few policies, what kind of parent would you be anyway???