How the hell do insurers punish the victims of a crash?

[StottyZr]

I've been hit twice in the past 3 months once parked, once sitting in stationary traffic! I daren't run a quote to see how my insurance will have changed due to 2 non fault accidents.

How would I go about claiming the rise in premium? I didn't realise this could be done!

[blueg33]

johnpeat said:

This has been covered here before - there are 2 massive issues in doing it

1 - insurers themselves won't get involved in it so you'll need to bring in solicitors/claims management companies to fight for it
2 - there's NO WAY to know the exact costs involved - insurers won't disclose their calculations/costs and you can't like-for-like compare with/without the accident and so you can't know the true cost.

People have tried to do it and I'm sure some may have received a token payment to cover it but there's no way to really cover this unless insurers decide to share their methods (and that's unlikely).

Its not that hard. You just get comparative quotes each year when you pay your insurance and claim the difference. Just don't sign anything that refers to "full and final settlement".

I don't know what makes you think that you can't like for like compare. That's just daft, the simple way is online through an insurers website the slightly less simple is to get a statement from your insurer. Works fine for me!

[Wafflesmk2]

StottyZr said:

I've been hit twice in the past 3 months once parked, once sitting in stationary traffic! I daren't run a quote to see how my insurance will have changed due to 2 non fault accidents.

How would I go about claiming the rise in premium? I didn't realise this could be done!

Isn't it done through a claims specialist thingy?

[blueg33]

Wafflesmk2 said:

Isn't it done through a claims specialist thingy?

They generally don't want to know, best to do it yourself in my experience. They only like the basic stuff like organising hire cars etc

[Devil2575]

You lot want to try having an at fault accident on your record

Both cars written off which was about £10k total then a whilpash claim which was about £3k then £11.5k of third party solicitors fees...

So a 25k claim against me.

12 years claim free and then bang, not I pay more to insure a Focus TDCI than I did a BMW 330i

Still, st happens

[johnpeat]

mnkiboy said:

If only it were that simple:
Reduce mileage: I bought a car for commuting to work. Turns out it's cheaper to insure for 10k miles per year than it is for 4K.
Job correctly stated: Tried a few variations of my job, never made a difference
Storing car off road: On road was cheaper than the garage!
Changing usage: My girlfriend added 'business use' to the policy. The premium dropped!

There's no simple rule of how to get cheaper insurance. They all have their own algorithms to work out the cost, which often don't seem to make much sense.

But even as your rather perverse experience shows - asking can reap wonders.

I've NEVER EVER failed to get a premium reduced by calling and fishing around - Direct Line (my current insurer) even suggest stuff!

[johnpeat]

blueg33 said:

Its not that hard. You just get comparative quotes each year when you pay your insurance and claim the difference. Just don't sign anything that refers to "full and final settlement".

You don't understand how this works do you? You think you can call insurer A and declare everything adn then call insurer B and miss out stuff and the 'difference' is the cost of the accident?

Won't work - insurance companies have databases of claims - they don't ask you about claims because they don't know about them, they ask you to check your honesty (and/or to give them grounds to cancel policies in the event you lied).

Once you've had a knock there is NO way to compare what your insurance would have been without it because it's on your record (and in theirs) - and thus you cannot make a reasonable claim against it (you may, with the help of a claims company, get someone money out of it tho).

Also - you can't keep on claiming every year - no company would support it or accede to it (they'd tell you to take them to court because they know you couldn't afford it).

Edited by johnpeat on Tuesday 14th February 17:52

[jimslops]

psychoR1 said:

With you there! Us punters have been fleeced royally for the insurers mismanagement over the last 20 plus years. Now the government are stepping in to regulate the claims managers. Claims managers only exist because of the historic incompetence of the insurers and their tardiness in dealing with claims. He'll insurers have been selling claims management for years and now they're squealing!
Insurers have been guilty of making "settle rather than investigate" decisions for years on personal injury and we have been picking up the tab! For certain premiums will go up, numbers of uninsured will go up as will the costs of claims.

This
Few members on here with very nice cars as a result...

[otolith]

It is in the interest of the insurer to estimate your risk as accurately as they can. If they underestimate risk, they will lose money. If they overestimate it, they will lose business. If a factor affects your premium, it is because they have reason to believe that it affects the risk they take in indemnifying you.

[otolith]

Ari said:

Heathwood said:

My old man worked in insurance all his life. He used to tell me that in previous times insurance premiums could start to go up if you hadn't had an accident / claim for many years, as probability dictated that you were due one.

No it doesn't.

That's like saying if you flip a coin three times and get heads each time, the fourth spin is more likely to come down tails as you've had three that were heads!

The coin has no memory, you're statistically as likely to get HHHH as HHHT, the three previous spins make no difference to the chances of the fourth.

Likewise the fact that you've had no crash for ten years doesn't change the probability of getting into a crash when you get in your car tomorrow morning.

The only thing you might be able to ascertain is that the ten year no crash driver is good at driving defensively, so in fact is less likely to crash.

But certainly the "logic" that going a certain period of time without a crash increases the risk is nonsense.

Unlike coins, though, drivers do have memories. So a driver who has not crashed in a long time might conceivably become complacent and drive less carefully. I don't believe that is the case, though, and it certainly does not appear to reflected in insurance prices.

[Mr2Mike]

otolith said:

It is in the interest of the insurer to estimate your risk as accurately as they can. If they underestimate risk, they will lose money. If they overestimate it, they will lose business. If a factor affects your premium, it is because they have reason to believe that it affects the risk they take in indemnifying you.

So why do different insurance companies have grossly different risk estimations of the same person? This alone suggests their data is not accurate or incomplete at best.

[johnpeat]

Mr2Mike said:

So why do different insurance companies have grossly different risk estimations of the same person? This alone suggests their data is not accurate or incomplete at best.

Because they look at the overall market and then applying loadings to areas they don't really want more business from - and perhaps even discounts to areas they do want business from.

Part of their actuarial data is how they're balanced against overall risk - the percentage of younger drivers/older drivers/high risk drivers/performance cars/boring cars/classic cars has to be adjusted somehow.

This is why insurance is always worth shopping around for - all the insurers have basically the same demographics but vastly different portfolios of customers.

Edited by johnpeat on Tuesday 14th February 18:40

[otolith]

Mr2Mike said:

otolith said:

It is in the interest of the insurer to estimate your risk as accurately as they can. If they underestimate risk, they will lose money. If they overestimate it, they will lose business. If a factor affects your premium, it is because they have reason to believe that it affects the risk they take in indemnifying you.

So why do different insurance companies have grossly different risk estimations of the same person? This alone suggests their data is not accurate or incomplete at best.

They're all making their own best estimate based on the data they have, and adding as much margin on top as they think they can get away with. It's only ever an estimate, and it's good for the sonsumer that they don't all do it in the same way. Our objective as a customer is to find the insurer with the worst underestimate of the risk we pose, or failing that, the smallest margin.

[blueg33]

johnpeat said:

You don't understand how this works do you? You think you can call insurer A and declare everything adn then call insurer B and miss out stuff and the 'difference' is the cost of the accident?

Won't work - insurance companies have databases of claims - they don't ask you about claims because they don't know about them, they ask you to check your honesty (and/or to give them grounds to cancel policies in the event you lied).

Once you've had a knock there is NO way to compare what your insurance would have been without it because it's on your record (and in theirs) - and thus you cannot make a reasonable claim against it (you may, with the help of a claims company, get someone money out of it tho).

Also - you can't keep on claiming every year - no company would support it or accede to it (they'd tell you to take them to court because they know you couldn't afford it).

Edited by johnpeat on Tuesday 14th February 17:52

I beg to differ. I know exactly how it works because I am doing it.

Its working for me on the second year of renewals so far on my family fleet policy. There is another PH member that is successfully doing the same. I used a claims company they didn't want to know. My solicitor wrote to the insurers of the other party and each year on renewal I present them with the price from my insurers, who look at the policy both with and without the non fault accident

So rather than be a condescending muppet try adding something useful to the discussion.

[johnpeat]

blueg33 said:

I beg to differ. I know exactly how it works because I am doing it.

Its working for me on the second year of renewals so far on my family fleet policy. There is another PH member that is successfully doing the same. I used a claims company they didn't want to know. My solicitor wrote to the insurers of the other party and each year on renewal I present them with the price from my insurers, who look at the policy both with and without the non fault accident

So rather than be a condescending muppet try adding something useful to the discussion.

Sorry but I don't believe you - I don't believe an insurer would offer such information (their systems are closed as far as being able to determine individual factors like accident risk - at least the ones I programmed are!!)

The fact you then resort to insults doesn't buoy your case - and even if you're not making this up, the fact you said that a claims company wouldn't entertain the idea so you had to resort to a solicitor suggests it's probably costing you more to do than you're gaining from it!?

How do you deal with issues such as getting a nicer car - should the person you claimed against pay for the difference as you buy more and more expensive cars!? Really??

The whole concept is just massive selfishness or some personally aggrandised need to be seen as special surely? Insurance is a system about grouping risk - you're trying to say that you should be treat differently - the system won't work if everyone does that!?

[Deva Link]

johnpeat said:

Sorry but I don't believe you - I don't believe an insurer would offer such information (their systems are closed as far as being able to determine individual factors like accident risk - at least the ones I programmed are!!)
?

It's perfectly feasible to use an online quote system and get prices including and not including a non-fault accident - I did it when someone ran into the back of my wife's car, and you can flip back and forth between the two premiums.

However her insurer, LV=, said they don't load for low value non-fault accidents and the premiums do come out the same either way. I accept it's feasible the LV system remembers the details, but the premium is competitive anyway so it's impossible to pick up any delta. Her renewal for the last couple of years has been cheaper than the online system anyway - LV must be pretty unique at that.

It did affect the kids policies, both with Admiral group insurers, on which she is a named driver but the difference was small - a few pounds.

I've seen several comments on here and in other places about people claiming the difference back - it seems an entirely reasonable thing to do.

[Trommel]

Deva Link said:

you can flip back and forth between the two premiums

I read on one of the consumer forums of someone being blacklisted by an insurer for generating multiple quotes with differing details (as ridiculous as it sounds).

[Deva Link]

Trommel said:

I read on one of the consumer forums of someone being blacklisted by an insurer for generating multiple quotes with differing details (as ridiculous as it sounds).

They do quite often block you out after a while and it takes differing degrees of difficulty to get back in! I look after the insurance for 4 cars so I do quite a bit of this sort of thing.

But the TV advert for one of the comparision sites shows people playing around with different criteria to get the best price / value.

[blueg33]

johnpeat said:

Sorry but I don't believe you - I don't believe an insurer would offer such information (their systems are closed as far as being able to determine individual factors like accident risk - at least the ones I programmed are!!)

The fact you then resort to insults doesn't buoy your case - and even if you're not making this up, the fact you said that a claims company wouldn't entertain the idea so you had to resort to a solicitor suggests it's probably costing you more to do than you're gaining from it!?

How do you deal with issues such as getting a nicer car - should the person you claimed against pay for the difference as you buy more and more expensive cars!? Really??

The whole concept is just massive selfishness or some personally aggrandised need to be seen as special surely? Insurance is a system about grouping risk - you're trying to say that you should be treat differently - the system won't work if everyone does that!?

I apologies for the insult but your were making categorical statements that are incorrect and claiming that I do not understand what I am talking about. In fact you are still doing it!

You can choose not to believe me if you like, but a blinkered view is of no help to anyone. The one thing I will not do is put copies of the correspondence on the web.

The car is the same car, I have not discussed with my solicitors what happens if I change for a more expensive one, but the effect would be the same, I have suffered a loss as the result of another person. The other side's insurers resisted paying, but the threat of a claim in the courts made them change their view.

As I said, its not just me, another PH'er has done similar and had a detailed description on a thread a couple of years ago.

Costs of a solicitors letter every year is about £20, the solicitors were dealing with other issues around the claim that have since been resolved. But they are of the opinion that I can write to the insurers each year and now its sorted it doesn't need a solicitor. Plus don't forget you can claim reasonable legal fees. This year the saving for me was £220, last year £290 approx.

Why on earth do you think that wishing to recover a loss is some sort of feeble attempt to look special? I am merely letting other people know that it IS possible to reclaim increased premiums.

You are also making the assumption that they only look at increased costs by using their systems. Its perfectly possible for them to model insurance premiums outside of their system in order to exclude automatic calculation factors - ask an actuary.

Call me a liar all you like, but it will not stop you from being wrong!

My policy on PH is to only make comments where I have experience, and I have no reason to lie. I go to PH meets regularly and have business contacts on here. The last thing I would want is to be seen as a liar, so I take a pretty dim view of being called one!

[r11co]

fandango_c said:

r11co said:

Insurance company agents should be sued for false allegations because of how they interpret their stats. They are guilty of probably the biggest mistake of statistical analysis which is to equate correlation with causation.

They say their stats show that if you have had one accident then you are more likely to have another.

In general, someone who has been involved in an accident is more likely to be involved in another accident than someone else who has not been involved in an accident. That's backed up by a lot of historical experience data.

Helloooooo! Knock knock. I am not disputing the stats here.....

fandango_c said:

r11co said:

This statement in itself is utter bks - the two facts are connected by a third causal factor that they are conveniently ignoring. You can probably make some good educated guesses at what the causal factors are.

It's not utter bks. The common factor is the insured driver.

Ahhh! Utter crap - the common factor is not the insured driver (unless of course you mean 'the generic insured driver' as in every one of their customers). The common factor is probably that they are inexperienced/young/incapable of driving/myopic/have no spatial awareness...... Insurers are simply (as in lazily and ignorantly) projecting the histories of customers who have had accidents onto another individual who has had one accident and assuming it'll be the same for them.

As I said - three people bought an ice cream in summer and drowned shortly afterwards. Therefor if you declare a penchant for buying ice creams in summer then the insurers will assume you are going to drown and charge you more even though you are Michael Phelps and they are basing their stats on Natalie Wood, Robert Maxwell and Dennis Wilson. The fact that you are a good swimmer and the three who died weren't doesn't come into it, and the insurers' stats say that the ice cream is what's important because the numbers add up.

fandango_c said:

There may not be a direct link between the two,

Exactly. No link so no connection so insurers are ignorant fraudsters. Stop trying to justify their actions. You don't need to tell me how it is because I know. I'm telling you though that they are wrong - scientifically wrong.

Edited by r11co on Wednesday 15th February 19:17

Edited by r11co on Wednesday 15th February 19:18