“Just use the website”

I tried to insure a bike this week, a simple enough task, right? Wrong. This turned into a full-blown obstacle course of broken websites, forced phone calls, and a quiet reminder that “everything is online now” only works if it actually works.

Short answer getting motorbike insurance in the UK is meant to be quick and fully online. Providers like Bennetts, Lexham Insurance, and MCN Compare all support online quotes and purchases. But the moment something goes wrong, errors, validation issues, or anything slightly unusual, many of them fall back to one solution, and that is where the real problem begins.

The process starts deceptively smooth. You fill in your details, select your bike, tweak the cover, and you think you are minutes away from being done. Then something breaks. A page refreshes for no reason. A form rejects perfectly valid information. One site even suggested my browser was the issue, which is always a nice way of saying “we do not know what is wrong, but it is definitely not us”.

These are not obscure companies either. These are mainstream insurers. The kind you would expect to have stable systems. Instead, they seem to be built for a very specific type of user, one who never makes a mistake, never refreshes, and never steps outside the expected flow. The moment you do, the whole experience starts to wobble.

And when it wobbles, you get the same response every single time. “Please call us.”

This is where it stops being a minor annoyance and turns into something far more serious. If you are hard of hearing, like I am, that instruction is not helpful; it is a dead end. It is the digital equivalent of being told the only exit is a staircase when you physically cannot use stairs.

I tried going through the proper channels. Contact forms, emails, and even the occasional live chat, where it existed. I explained clearly that using the phone is difficult for me. The responses either took ages, redirected me back to the phone, or simply ignored the accessibility issue entirely. It felt less like support and more like being quietly pushed back into a system that does not consider you.

What makes this more frustrating is how often we hear that everything is digital now. Banking, shopping, services, all online, all convenient. And to be fair, a lot of it is. Until it is not. Until something breaks, and the only backup plan is a method that not everyone can use.

That is the real issue here. Accessibility is not about whether your main system works when everything is perfect. It is about what happens when it does not. If your fallback is inaccessible, then your entire service is, by extension, inaccessible.

This is not just about me either. There are thousands of people in the UK who are deaf or hard of hearing, alongside many others who cannot easily use phones for different reasons. Yet major services still treat phone calls as the ultimate solution, as if that works for everyone.

It does not.

We talk a lot about inclusive design, especially in tech and education, and yet here we are with essential services still missing the basics. If your system breaks and your only answer is “call us”, then the system is not finished. It is just hiding its limitations behind a phone number.

The practical takeaway is simple. If you are trying to get bike insurance, expect it to mostly work online, but be prepared to try multiple providers. Look for ones that offer proper live chat or email support before you even start the process, not as an afterthought.

And if you are on the other side, building these systems, treat accessibility as a core requirement, not a feature. Because right now, it feels like the industry has built a digital front door, but left a very narrow, very inconvenient back exit.

At this point, I am half convinced the easiest way to ensure a bike is to stand next to it and wait for an insurer to appear out of thin air with a clipboard.