Whose Quote is Fastest -- Esurance or Geico?

Whose Quote is Fastest -- Esurance or Geico?

Esurance Says It Can Beat Geico's 15 Minutes By Half; We Test the Claim

By Grace Chung. Published on February 20, 2014.

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Esurance has been making a lot of noise lately, first with its successful Super Bowl twitter stunt that waved around $1.5 million to the public, and now a campaign that tries to one-up a major competitor.

While we all know that none of us want to spend time on things like car insurance, nobody seems to know it better than auto insurance giant Geico with its nearly two decade-old mantra, "15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance."

But now Esurance is tut-tuting the claim, indicating it's about seven-and-a-half minutes too slow.

In a new ad released this week, Larry, aka "HD Holdout," kind of an outdated crazy person, tells us how to save time with the ridiculous suggestion of not rewinding a DVD. At the end of the ad, Esurance spokesman John Krasinski narrates, "15 minutes for a quote is crazy. With Esurance, 7-and-a-half minutes could save you on car insurance. Welcome to the modern world."

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The second commercial is similar in nature. Titled "Beatrice," the spot shows an elderly woman who, instead of mailing out her vacation photos, literally posts them to a wall in her home for her friends to see. She does this to save time she says, comparing it with the 15% she saves in 15 minutes for car insurance. Of course her friends then go on to tell her that's not how it's done these days.

The ads, from Publicis' Leo Burnett, Chicago, are an obvious attempt to counteract Geico's long-standing catchphrase, as Esurance claims it can do the same job in exactly half the time. But how does it play out in real life?

We put the two companies through a time test and signed up for quotes via their website. We found that both Esurance and Geico made good on their claims and provided us with quotes well under the guaranteed time. The results were very close. Geico came in first at 3 minutes and 5 seconds while it took Esurance 3 minutes and 19 seconds to deliver.

Of course, none of this actually matters in reality, where drivers care more about the actual cost of insurance rather than the small difference in time it takes to get a quote. Time, it seems, isn't always money.

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