The agreement

By using our website and comparison technology you are agreeing to these terms and conditions so that we can deliver to you the cover you require where it is available from online providers for UK insurance and financial service providers.

The service

We provide a fully independent and online insurance search engine, designed to save you time and money when it comes to reviewing your insurance. Not only will we endeavour to find you the most competitive quotes but also provide you with all the information required to make an informed choice on which policy best suits your needs.

The company

Gocompare.com Limited is registered in England and Wales, registration number 05799376, registered address 1 Imperial Courtyard, Imperial Park, Newport, NP10 8UL, United Kingdom. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority, registration number 465053. This can be confirmed at www.fsa.gov.uk/register.

The responsibility

We will provide you with a quotation based on the information you have provided to us. It is essential that all information and answers are true and accurate and that you also disclose all relevant facts. Failure to provide accurate information could lead to your insurance being invalid and you being liable for any third party costs in the event of an accident.

In order to accept a quotation provided by our price comparison technology you will need to link to the underlying insurer website and retrieve your details to accept the policy, or where applicable, contact them by phone. Before accepting a policy it is of the utmost importance that all the information the insurer holds on you is accurate. It is your responsibility to ensure all details are correct. Failure to do so could result in your insurance being invalid. It is also important that you read the insurers terms or conditions as they will differ from ours and are the terms that you will be agreeing to.

The technology used is very sophisticated but not infallible. If the information passed is not correct it is your responsibility to identify the mistake and, as such, we relinquish all liability which by law we can exclude, in respect of all losses you may incur.

If you have any doubt whether further information about you, not requested during the Gocompare.com service is required to be disclosed, or that something may be incorrect, please contact the proposed insurer before you accept the quotation.

Complaints

We set ourselves very high standards and look to provide these high standards in everything we do, but we also know there may be occasions when you feel we have not achieved this. In these rare cases we want you to tell us as this is the only way we'll be able to improve our service. How do you do this? Well, you can write or send an email to us and we will look to resolve the matter as quickly and fairly as possible.

Email to not-happy@gocompare.com

If the complaint is of a more serious nature, or you're not happy with your reply, then you should write to the Compliance Officer at the above address.

The Compliance Officer is responsible for monitoring the quality of our service and will ensure that your complaint is dealt with correctly. We will acknowledge your complaint within five business days and inform you who is dealing with your complaint. If our investigations take longer that this we will provide a full written response within 4 weeks, or explain the current position of your complaint and provide you with an indication as to when we expect to provide our final response.

If your complaint relates to the insurer or the insurance policy then you will be advised and given full details of how to contact your insurer.

If you have been given a final response and you are still dissatisfied then you are entitled to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) who can be contacted at:

Financial Ombudsman Service,

Any decision made by the Financial Ombudsman Service is only binding on the Insurers and Gocompare.com limited. You may remain free to take legal action in court.

Other important information

Intended use

This site is intended for use of UK residents only and due to this, applications from non-UK residents will, unless otherwise stated, not be accepted. These terms and conditions shall be governed by and interpretted in accordance with the Laws of England and Wales.

Links to other sites

We provide links to third party websites as part of our service. We accept no liability for any statements, information, content, products or services that are published on, or may be accessible from, these third party sites. We can also give no guarantee they are free from viruses or anything else that could be infectious or destructive.

Website content

We have taken every step to ensure the information contained and displayed on our website is accurate and up-to-date. However, we can accept no liability for any errors or omissions. We reserve the right to add, amend or delete content from the site at any time.

Copyright

The copyright in the material contained on the site belongs to Gocompare.com Limited. Any person may copy any part of this material, subject to the following conditions:

• the material may not be used for commercial purposes
• the copies must retain any copyrights or other intellectual property notices contained in the original material
• any images on the site are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission from the owner

Commercial use

Please note this web site is for non-commercial, personal use only.

Intellectual property

All Intellectual Property Rights pertaining to Gocompare.com Limited are hereby reserved.

Amendments

We reserve the right to amend our terms and conditions at any time. The amended terms will be effective from the date they are posted on our site.

Privacy statement

Data protection

This policy has been developed because we want you to feel confident about the privacy and security of your personal information entered on our site. We follow strict security procedures in the storage and disclosure of your information as required by law. Our security procedures mean that we may ask for proof of your identity before we will disclose information about you, or to you, be this on our site or over the telephone.

In order to provide our service to you we need to collect and process personal information about you and disclose that information to a number of third party service providers. This information is necessary to provide you with the quotations you have requested. All personal information will be held in strictest confidence and used only for the purposes for providing you the service requested with certain caveats as described below.

Information disclosure

Our comparison technology will disclose the information you have entered into the Gocompare.com website to our partner websites for the purpose of providing us with quotations on the requested product. We will also be using your data for our own research and for tracking any purchased policies. By using our site you are giving us permission to use your data in this way.

We will not disclose any of your information to other parties without your permission unless we are legally required to do so by, for example, a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime. By submitting information into our site, you consent to the processing of this data about you by us and the product providers. We may also use the information you supply to us to keep you informed of any new products or remind you when your renewal may be due.

If you are not happy for your data to be used in this way, please click on the unsubscribe me link and you be able to remove your details from out contact list. If you have further queries with regards to your personal data, please feel free to email us on unsubscribe@gocompare.com or write to us at :

Data Protection Officer

Unsolicited e-mails

Most sites will send a confirmation email once a quote has been completed on their site, but as we go to a large number of sites with our technology, you could be bombarded by emails from our partners. To prevent this from happening we will not opt-in to marketing communications on any of the underlying sites. By taking this route for you, you should not receive any communication from any of the providers other than those outlined in this Privacy Statement. Although we cannot guarantee this we do have contractual arrangements in place to prevent our partners doing this, so please let us know if you do experience any problems.

Your personal data

Gocompare.com complies with and is registered under the data protection laws in the United Kingdom and takes all reasonable care to prevent any unauthorised access to your personal data. Under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998. If you require a copy of the information we have concerning you, please write to the Data Protection Officer and enclose a cheque for the administration fee of £10.00 made payable to Gocompare.com. We are entitled to charge you this fee under the Data Protection Act 1998 to cover our administrative costs. We reserve the right to amend or modify this privacy policy statement at any time and in response to changes in applicable data protection and privacy legislation.

How we use your personal data

Your personal information is used for the purpose of getting you an insurance quote. Additionally, Gocompare.com and other carefully selected third parties may use your information to keep you informed by post, telephone, SMS or email about current and new products and services which may be of interest to you. Your information may also be disclosed and used for these purposes after your policy has lapsed.

If you are not happy for your data to be used in this way, please click on the unsubscribe me link and you be able to remove your details from out contact list. If you have further queries with regards to your personal data, please feel free to email us on unsubscribe@gocompare.com or write to us at:

Data Protection Officer

Removing data

If you would like us to remove any personal information from our records, then please write to us at:

Data Protection Officer

Please supply your full name, address and date of birth when contacting us. We will make all reasonable efforts to delete your information from our files if it is deemed appropriate.

Help with choosing

By agreeing to the conditions laid out in this privacy & security statement you agree that your details may be used by the top two competing individual service providers who provided you with the cheapest quotes to contact you with a view to seeing if you are interested in purchasing the quote. They may also highlight any special offers or ways they might be able to help you get an even cheaper price with them. Please note that the companies contacting you are solely based on the cheapest price retrieved not exclusively based on the cover you selected. They are only entitled to contact you on this particular quotation and only for a limited period of time, after which they are obliged to consider your details as 'off limits' i.e. opted-out under the terminology of the Data Protection Act 1998. Some partners may also contact you by telephone if you click through to their website to help you with any queries you may have, regardless of their position in the results.

Monitoring

Monitoring or recording of your calls, emails, text messages and other communications may take place in accordance with UK law, and in particular for business purposes, such as for quality control and training; processing necessary for the entering into or the performance of a contract; to prevent unauthorised use of our telecommunication systems and web sites; to ensure effective systems operation; to meet any legal obligation; in order to prevent or detect crime; and for the purposes of the legitimate interests of the data controller. Please visit the following web sites for further information www.ico.gov.uk/ and www.berr.gov.uk.

Confidentiality

We will endeavour to treat all your personal information as private and confidential. Other than under the terms of this Privacy Statement we will not disclose any of your information to anyone. We would like to bring your attention though to our obligations to disclose information in the following four exceptional cases permitted by law. These are where we are legally compelled to do so; where there is a duty to the public to disclose; where disclosure is required to protect our interest; and where disclosure is made at your request or with your consent.

If relevant, your policy details will be added to the Motor Insurance Database (MID), run by the Motor Insurers Information Centre (MIIC).

This may be consulted by the Police in order to establish who is insured to drive the vehicle.

If you are involved in an accident, (in the UK or abroad), other UK Insurers, the Motor Insurers Bureau and MIIC may search the MID to ascertain relevant policy information. Persons with a valid claim in respect of a road traffic accident (including citizens of other countries) may also obtain certain information which is held on the MID. You can find out more about this at www.miic.org.uk

Should you take the decision to make a complaint about the service we have provided, we may be obliged to forward details about your complaint, including your personal information, to the relevant ombudsman in existence at the time. You can be assured that they are similarly obliged to adhere to the Data Protection Act 1998 and keep your information strictly confidential.

Credit searches

Many insurance and financial services providers operate a credit scoring system and will carry out checks with credit reference and fraud prevention agencies. These checks will include electoral roll and credit information. The insurance checks are registered as general insurance searches and may be viewed by other companies when you apply for credit or insurance. Often the financial services quotes you request will only do a credit check once you have decided on a particular supplier. Every application you submit for a loan or credit card may affect your credit scoring so you may wish to keep applications to a minimum for your credit rating. Again, this is not happening specifically because you are using our service. This may happen regardless of whether you get a quote via the internet or phone for any of these services.

Cookies and IP addresses

A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

Your IP address is a series of numbers which identify a computer on the internet. We use IP addresses to help diagnose possible service interruptions and administer our service and website.

Law

These terms of trading are subject to English law and to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts. You acknowledge that by providing data to us, you consent to the processing of your data in accordance with this privacy and security statement.

Security statement

Site security

We use the industry standard secure sockets layer (SSL) 128-bit encryption technology to ensure that all your personal and transactional information is encrypted before transmission. To check that you are in a secure area of our site look at the bottom of your browser and you will see a closed padlock. All this technology and our policies are to safeguard your privacy from unauthorised access/improper use and we will continue to update these measures as new technology becomes available.

Third party site security

We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites, even if you access them using links from our website and recommend that you check the policy of each site you visit.

Passwords

In order to provide you with maximum protection, we ask you to choose a password to access your data on our site. In many instances, this password will also access the quotes we find for you on the web. Some providers might allocate you a different password, which we will send you information about. Your password is unique to you and helps us to protect your personal information. You must keep this password safe and must not disclose it to anyone. You will need your password to access your personal information and potentially to buy cover through one of the insurance providers. Please contact us if you want to change your password for any reason.

If you forget your password don't panic! Simply click on "forgotten password".

Be aware

Please be aware that communications over the Internet, such as emails/webmails, are not secure unless they have been encrypted. Your communications may route through a number of countries before being delivered - this is the nature of the World Wide Web/Internet. We cannot accept responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of personal information that is beyond our control.