Insurance Renewals...do your homework

[Rahul uk]

So recently go my multi car insurance renewal quote through the post for £1300. Decided to use an online price search portal to see if that could be bettered and to my surprise it could be improved on to the tune of £600 by the insurer I was already with. So decided to continue with online quote process, get the reference numbers for both cars and call my insurer with the good news. Price was matched and I am off to spend the money saved on an iPhone 6. Never again will I accept the auto renewal price. When I asked the insurance company how they could get it so badly wrong they said they were have some glitches with their systems...like anyone actually believes that story.

[zeduffman]

Has this not been the case for years? If you've never shopped around, think how much money you've wasted for the sake of half an hour a year.

[Rahul uk]

Guilty of staying with the same insurance company for a while, mainly because I chop and change cars so frequently during the course of a year it makes it easier to keep with the same insurer. My point was that the same insurer quoted two wildly different prices for the same cars.

[djdestiny]

As above, this is nothing new.
They've always bumped up renewal prices to take advantage of lazy people who just renew without searching first.
Its always been the same for the same company quoting different prices too, one is your bumped up renewal and the other is a quote as if you were a new customer

[romeogolf]

This is pretty standard. They make money off the fact that people don't bother to shop around and will just renew when the letter comes through without a second thought.

Best prices always go to new customers unless you call them and mention it directly.

Same with breakdown cover.

[V88Dicky]

I do the same every year, although my renewal was a very reasonable £850 (three cars with a combined cc of 13.7L ).

Still managed to chop nearly 100 quid off that.

Admiral by any chance?

[Cupramax]

This advert was bought to you by "Gocompare your Meerkat"

[james_gt3rs]

Admiral don't bat an eyelid when you renew, they just ask for the number and match it straight away. There must be lots of people who just autorenew though...

[J4CKO]

Rahul, "You're so Money Supermarket"

But correct, pays to not just take a renewal

[schmunk]

Oddly, this year my (wife's, technically) renewal quote was cheaper than I could find with a comparison...

No claims, points, or other mitigating factors.

About £230 for the base policy for our turbo fun bus.

[B'stard Child]

Had a bit of a weird one this year when shopping around after getting the renewal notification.

First was the automatic renewal was £148 cheaper than last years premium (I put this down to possibly an age milestone reached this year)

Second when I compared the renewal price with the same company on line direct - they were unable to provide an online quote (this was a bit weird as nothing in my quote request info had changed apart from the Age milestone and another years NCB (not that they count after 5 years anyway)

Third I compared the merekats and only 3 companies were cheaper than my renewal quote (and again my existing insurer declined to provide a quote)

The three companies who did provide cheaper quotes were all companies where it could be said I'm buying a product to comply with the law rather than a product that will offer me some support in the event of an incident where I needed to claim.

So for the £25 - £29 savings I don't think I'll bother changing and I'll let the policy auto renew

Never ever had anything like this before - perhaps I've slipped into the twiglet zone!!

[B'stard Child]

schmunk said:

Oddly, this year my (wife's, technically) renewal quote was cheaper than I could find with a comparison...

No claims, points, or other mitigating factors.

About £230 for the base policy for our turbo fun bus.

So I'm not alone although I did find quotes cheaper I wouldn't use any of the companies that provided them and certainly not for £25-£29 saving

[B'stard Child]

Rahul uk said:

Guilty of staying with the same insurance company for a while, mainly because I chop and change cars so frequently during the course of a year it makes it easier to keep with the same insurer. My point was that the same insurer quoted two wildly different prices for the same cars.

That's one of things that can factor in the hidden costs - I don't change my cars very often so don't care about admin costs for car changes - however I do care about a reasonable number of days for European cover. I also want a sensible excess and I often find the cheaper policies charge for European cover as an extra and have much higher additional excess - correcting those differences often wipes out any/all savings.

[Billyray911]

My automatic renewal with LV has come in at £328.39,but going through a comparison website,the exact same policy-also with LV- with a couple of modifications and a couple of bolt-ons is £30 cheaper.
I've contacted LV and the call handler said "that's an automatic renewal,so we can't give you a cheaper quote".As she was quite definite with no wiggle room,I cancelled the policy there and then.
I've just looked at the comparison site to make sure that I'm not going mad and it's still coming in at £30 cheaper.Ill see if LV call me again as my policy expires on the 4th-if not it will be LV again as they are the cheapest,just via the comparison site.Cool story,I know!

[balls-out]

Same with broadband.
Just given mine a call to complain. Price reduced by 25% and a bandwidth upgarde.

[ben5732]

Mine wanted £800 on renewal online quote of £350 rang up to cancel and they matched the 350...

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Rahul uk said:

Price was matched and I am off to spend the money saved on an iPhone 6.

Spend the saved money on overpriced tat.....brilliant!

[XFDreamer]

I had my renewal through from my insurer recently.(The biggest supermarket) Same price as last year more or less but I was lazy last year and just auto renewed.

Today I was just about to dial the number to renew again when I thought sod it and went on their website and fed in all my details. It came back £150 cheaper than the original quote of £350.

So I gave them a call and they matched it. Result!

Well worth the 10 minutes online and 15 minutes on the phone.

[cossy400]

This yr is about the only yr ive stayed with the same company, but always compare before the renewal dates.

And if its more than a tenner dearer and they ll not match then ill change.


Insurance is the biggest con going but they ve got us by the bks, so I vote with my feet a lot of the time.

[Funk]

My renewal came out pretty reasonably this year. There were quotes on comparison sites a little cheaper but once I'd added the additional bits of cover I have (legal, hire car, no voluntary etc) they came out about the same and the cost saving to change wasn't worth the hassle. That was with Admiral.