Naturally you are paying a little more for the service middlemen provide, if you have the time to trawl the Internet or the money to make multiple phone calls then of course you could save yourself this extra expense. If a friend asked you to spend several hours ringing and surfing these same companies would you feel entitled to a little recompense? What if a hundred friends were asking you? I for one am quite happy with the service I have received from CIS they have saved me a considerable amount on the quotes I got going direct. But if you're offering to help us all cut out middlemen can we just pm you next time? : )
Also I find the free translation services fine for the odd word or sentence but get mostly gibberish with any large amounts of text. Hopeless to workout if you have no understanding of any of the language. These free services don't adjust the grammar differences in languages they just literally translate each word and pick the first word in their dictionary regardless of the multiple meanings of some words.

Disclaimer: My only connection with CIS is being a satisfied customer.
Bruixot