Why are people so gullible?

Question

When it comes to buying Insurance for that very expensive Car or House they go for the cheapest.Beleiving that in the event of a claim they will be paid out.But the same people go into a Supermarket and buy a tin of a regular brand beans for 35p,but ignore the stores own brand (most likely supplied by a multiple) at 16p.

Answer 1

With all respect, most British people have no clue about food, so they'll just hope that spending more money they'll get better quality which isn't true in 90% of cases, especially for Sainsbury's beans :)
Sorry for being abrupt, I hear the Americans are even worse so there you go.
If it makes you all feel better, the rest of the world is following you in the junk food crusade.

Answer 2

People are gullible - How many advertising campaigns have you seen for insurance based on quality of cover or claims service (there have been some). Every insurance provider knows that that is a non-starter. Now look in the telephone directory for car insurance (mine has 100+ pages in it) and see if you can find ANY that does not say or imply cheapness! We now have the ridiculous stage where you get £100 cashback on your insurance policy and I'm witing for someone to offer 'buy your car insurance and get your house insurance free' - we already have buy your buildings insurance and get your contents insurance half price. It is ludicrous - it's not underwriting it's trying to buy market share on a loss-leader basis.

With regards to food, the quality of most processed food is terrible - high in sugar, salt, trans and hydrogenated fats - simply because people want cheap food. Do you look at and understand the contents of every food you buy? Similarly most people don't look at or understand the contents of the car insurance they buy for their expensive car.

When you buy a tin of beans your maxium loss is the cost of the tin. When you buy an insurance policy your maximum loss could be a hundred times the cost of the policy - if not more. Hardly a good reason to skimp on cover or lie on the application.

(I suppose I'd better amend that - after all if you buy very cheap food that has not been properly looked after you could suffer food poisoning - I suppose buying a rubbish insurance policy risks the financial equivalent.)

Answer 3

I would agree with you if you were talking about designer labels but with insurance I think people buy the cheapest because they don't believe that they are going to make a claim, and consider it wasted money, not because they think they will get paid out.
I don't think your baked bean analogy holds water either unlike the beans that you mention, the fact is if you buy those beans you deserve what you get, which is probably the sweepings up off the floor or worse, there really is a difference in the quality which is evident if you ever open up a tin.

Answer 4

Unfortuneately people tend to trust in official looking people and also trust people in positions of power, thinking that they are doing the best for them, when really they are just trying to fill quota's and don't care about the customers at all. As for the food part, we here in australia have lots of generic brands and they are great, I try them, if I like them, I buy them again, if I don't, then I just go back to my usual brand, no problems, I hope that this gives you a bit of perspective from another country and another reason why people do such things, Goodluck to you, By the way hows the weather, its spring here but getting very hot already, probably because of the drought, nice
talking to you cya.

Answer 5

Yeah, but the same person has shunned the 39p and the 38p beans to buy the 35p beans, even though the 39p beans might have been better. But, they aren't gullible enough to buy the 16p beans - because they WILL be terrible.

Most people don't go for the cheapest insurance - they go for best value for money...

Answer 6

Cheap insurance is often not much use, especially when it comes to insurance for home and property. Buy the best and get it from a mutual source, not a bank who are more interested in their shareholders than you.

Here is probably one of UKs very best Mutual fund insurerers.

Home - Royal London Group consists of The Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Limited and its subsidiaries. We are the UK's largest mutual life and pensions ...
http://www.royallondongroup.co.uk


Supermarket foods. The kind of person who buys branded goods and not own-brands in a supermarket, is what I call a 'food snob'. A person who believes that baked beans at 35p are better than baked beans at 11p +.

Sainsbury grow their own navy beans right here in UK. The farmers who grow them on behalf of the company get a guaranteed price for their havest. We the customers get cheap baked beans at around 15pence a can.

Sainsbury navy beans grown here in UK are guaranteed GM free. They may not be organic, but who gives a damn.

I buy Sainsbury's Basics, including their cheap gut rot red wine from spain at £2.10 a bott. hic!

Edit: Mark above obviously knows damn all about food. Cheap does not mean terrible in the same way that organic does not mean good. People like Mark should try living on a World War 2 diet, just as I did when growing up in the war years. Food was plentiful and cheap. War vets are now living right into their mid to late 80s. All this on cheap food.

Answer 7

I dont think cheap means that they wont pay out. They may prefer - like me - not to include all of the addition extras that I probably wouldnt claim on, because if I claimed for my ipod (£200) and paid £50 xs, plus a premium load and loss of no claims discount, then its not really worth it.

I think the people that have absolutely everything one their policy are gullible, not the other way round

Answer 8

It's called personal choice. By the by, all insurers are regulated in the UK, there's no evidence I've seen that a "cheaper" company wouldn't pay out in the same circumstances that a more expensive one would . . .

Answer 9

Gullible is the only word in the english language not in the official oxford englsih dictionary

Answer 10

I think it is because now days people are in such a hurry to get things done that they lose track of looking for quality.