motor insurance rant

Last year my aged 200sx was quoted at £98. I'm offered an automatic renewal this year £110 Plus £50 set-up fee!

A whole new meercat quote comes out cheapest at £90 which I'll obviously take up. But £50 for pressing a renewal button and calling it a setup fee??? Yes it would share the nuisance of chasing NCD docs etc.

It's evidently a ploy round new law preventing existing customers being soaked with higher quotes.

Pgk

Just renewed my wifes policy ... no renewal fee ... £117 .. was £115 last year!

Dave

My quote went up this year - a bit! But this is the first year in living memory that the cheapest quotes on the meerkat were more expensive than the renewal quote.

Every year in the past I have used the meerkat quotes to either negotiate the renewal offer down to something sensible, or swapped to a new policy.

Bought a piece of steel tubing $600's worth and merchant charged $24 Credit card acceptance fee. Would have bought cash if I would have known that.

Credit card acceptance fees are not allowed in the UK. However over here you would have been hit with $120 worth of the dreaded VAT.

Last year I renewed the car insurance with a broker on the Meercats for £201 having made what I thought was an honest declaration on the proposal form. Three weeks later I received an email informing me that the policy was being annulled because I had made a dishonest application. After about three hours' worth of phone calls it turned out that this was because I had informed the previous insurance company that the car had been scraped on a car park hit and run. I had not pursued a claim as I paid for the damage myself at an independent repair shop. This incident, which was no fault of mine or cost any insurance company a penny was being held against me and that if I wanted the policy to continue it would cost an additional £120. After further negotiation this was reduced to £45 which I paid because I needed insurance and could do without the hassle. This year I received the renewal price of £268. I queried this with the broker again who agreed to reduce this to last year's price which I have paid.

If the wife hadn't phoned me distressed and in tears saying that 'someone had gone into the side of the car' which had made me immediately assume she had been had been side-swiped in an accident I would not have informed the insurance company until I had seen the damage for myself. It was only when I called her back and she had calmed down that I got out out of her exactly what had happened and I realised my error and immediately called the insurance company back to withdraw the 'claim'. It cost me £500 for the repair as against a £400 insurance excess and an expected rise in premium which I am obviously still paying for.

Edited By Chris Crew on 14/06/2022 21:20:13

You should try insuring a car over here !

Chris, " scraped on a car park hit and run "

I wonder if the insurance company misread this as "Scrapped" in error? That would explain their action?

Martin

Relatively expensive insurance has some benefits (but not to you careful and blameless drivers). Here in primitive NZ, insurance is not compulsory, so young lads career around in high-performance cars, which may - or may not - have scraped through the MOT-equivalent examination, which is feeble in comparison to the MOT. Darwinism removes a few, but the remainder are a danger to all, and a noisy annoyance. Driving standards here are dire.

I lived in France for a number of years. They had two types of insurance. Within France and outside France. At the time my English insurance was £300 pa fully com. The French insurance with AXA was £80 and that was fully com full European cover. At the time motoring was a whole lot cheaper then in the U.K.

Just renewed my car insurance with as quoted by the insurer “a five star defaqto expert rated” insurer. Last year the premium was £244, this year £257, I have no complaints and am perfectly happy with cost which includes a discount for 13 years no claim discount, the prices are very much dependent on the area in which you live, the nearer to large city conurbations the higher premiums generally become. A strange anomaly that I have come across with some insurers, my own included, is that as a 75 year old if I insure for myself as the sole driver then the premium is higher than if my wife is also on the policy as another named driver, she is also the same age as myself. My wife still has a current driving licence but prefers to be a passenger nowadays which suits me, can anyone explain why insurance companies reduce the premium if there are two named drivers on a policy as opposed to a single driver, it doesn’t seem logical to me.

In respect of Chris and his penalty for a non claim it appears that most insurers follow the same process so it appears that if you have the misfortune to scrape your car and fund the repairs out of your own pocket telling your insurer will cost you dearly even though they are not required to fund any repairs. If not telling them then that contravenes the contract that you have taken out with your insurer depends in all probability how you interpret the complex insurance document they have given you. It is so easy with the way insurance terms are written to find yourself being accused of insurance fraud. Dave W

The reduced policy cost for a second driver is common but also counter intuitive to me as to how that reduces risk. I dug further on other comparison sites and chose a quote from a Co. offering 2 choices; 1st choice was £85 plus optional £39 extra for legal protection. Option 2 was £95 including legal protection!!.

I then rang current provider to cancel auto-renewal and their rep started a discussion re reducing their price. But that reduced price was still plus a setup fee. He tried giving me some flannel about comparison sites selling his insurance at a loss... I pointed out that wasn't my problem and we parted ways.

Sigh.. I have to go through all this again in 3 months for my Tesla. Getting sane quotes on that can be a challenge.

pgk

My Daughter just been telling me the quote for our caravan insurance went up by £70 she phoned them and ended up paying £5 less than last year if insurance companies didn't play this silly game with renewals they could keep their own cost's down

H

When you have an accident, the second drivers premiums go up as well!

Quite a lot of the cost of insurance is due to payouts, £13.4 billion in 2017. Insurance companies don't pay for repairs, write-offs and life changing injuries: motorists do. The highest UK payout I found on the web for a motor accident is £28,000,000. To pay that, 110,000 motorists like me and Samsaranda have to drive for a year without making a claim.

Dave

How come second driver premium goes up...they're just a named driver. If my wife bent her car I wouldn't have seen a need for me to add that as an incident on my next renewal on one of my cars. I don't recall anything on the proposals I've just been filling in asking whether a car I'm named driver on has made a claim.

You don't need to. Insurance companies share information and know who is covered, policy holders and named drivers. Not difficult or expensive to do, connected computers, not the ledgers and letters that made insurance fraud worth a punt when I was a sprog!

Anyone who has a named driver on their policy and fancies the experiment is welcome to make a claim and see what happens when everyone's premiums are renewed.

Harry: sorry, don't know about 2019. 2017 figures are the most recent I could find.

Dave

Dave

If your wife had an accident or claim on her car, you would have to declare that on your policy if she is a named driver ... under the second driver details it asks if the 2nd driver had had any accidents or claims (It has on every policy I have had)... so your policy quote would go up!

Received a renewal reminder from RAC Car Insurance this week.

Last year's total = £115.25

Renewal price = £213.39 !!!!!!!!!

I tried to cancel online but was unable to do so. You can renew online (with no interaction) but to cancel you have to contact a customer representative.

I've changed insurer.

Zenith Insurance. Fully comprehensive. £0 voluntary excess. £109.54

This might be of interest

https://www.freemotorlegal.co.uk/

Edited By AJAX on 15/06/2022 22:10:58