Guys, insurance is not alone on having to haggle. That is pretty much how 99% of business works, as any business person in here will tell you: You never pay the first price. It's always about haggling, and getting the best deal on big purchases. For most people on here you're looking at spending between £700 to £1000 on insurance, but if you walked into a furniture store and wanted to buy a particular sofa marked up at £950, you'd haggle. If you were buying a secondhand car for that money, you'd haggle. For anything above the usual £100 weekly shop in Tesco, you haggle.
Companies work on the principle that you set a price but you don't expect everyone to pay that. You might get a few that do that are too lazy/stupid/rich to care about the cost and on them you make a lovely great profit, but you expect the majority of people to try and knock 5-20% off. You barter as much as you can without wanting to lose the sale but still retaining a good profit (see: selling secondhand cars).
Insurance companies aren't evil or money-grabbing tosspots or trying to fleece you out of every penny. They're simply a company in business to make a profit, and if you were trying to make a profit you wouldn't be offering your best price straight off either. If they give you a silly quote of £2K then it's because they don't want your business, and the extra cost/risk involved in taking you on is why they're charging so high. I've done that before, put in a daft high price for a job because I didn't really want it, but if I got it then I wanted to make a nice little earner on it to account for the ballache. That's life.