Regular readers may recall how, back in September, Bankstone News reported delays to the launch of would-be mould-breaking telematics aggregator Wee Joe.

They may further recall that Wee Joe was threatening to “shake-up” of the world of motor insurance with a revolutionary combination of telematics, price comparison, and lifestyle-based recommendations and offers.

Back then, Wee Joe pushed back its launch date to some unspecified point in the future while it persevered in trying to make the bl**dy thing work, aka: “making sure every element is fine-tuned before we launch to the general public.”

The delays, Wee Joe said, would also allow it to spend some time “exploring some exciting new elements”. One such new element, as it turns out, was back-burnering the whole telematics bit.

Wee Joe is now officially live, proudly offering quotes from around 90 insurers, in much the same way all those other comparison sites do, but with the added benefit of a ‘free’ app (coming soon, according to the Wee Joe website) that allows users to give away all their driving data in return for a somewhat nebulous offer of ‘discounts, offers and freebies’.

Those who download the app will get to find out whether they are driving nicely (though good behaviour won’t get them money off their premiums) and have personalised location-specific advice and sales messages delivered straight to their phones, wherever they go.

“If the consumer doesn’t mind giving us their data,” Wee Joe top man Dick Barlow has said, the Wee Joe app will save users money and try to flog them stuff at special low-low prices.

If, on the other hand, the consumer turns out not to be all that keen on handing over their data, Wee Joe can presumably carry on doing what it’s doing right now: i.e. not much.

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