Winter/Summer wheels & tyres storage

[dopamine]

Morning all,

Thanks for all the input

Viper - Yes I'd seen them and agree £50 is a very good price with most fitters charging between £12 & £15 per tyre for fitting! Basically storage for free!

ging84 - Interesting comments... I am not familiar with what happened with the insurance companies - could you elaborate? Did they charge more if you changed on to winters?

Glosphil - Sounds like a neat little device - where did you get it?

Jimboka - Aye - it's all official and above board

FBP1 - Was it a standard advertised service? Or are they just helping you out as a one off? Interesting that dealers would do this, especially at such a keen price. Agree with your point about not getting dirty or hassled - that strikes me as the reasons people might go for this. Interesting also about you mentioning skiing - that seems like a good set to market to

Thanks again all, if anyone needs tyres anytime soon PM me and I'll sort you a good price,

Cheers

Travis
Pistonheads Tyres
http://pistonheads.tyregiant.com

[RobM77]

dopamine said:

ging84 - Interesting comments... I am not familiar with what happened with the insurance companies - could you elaborate? Did they charge more if you changed on to winters?

ging84's comment interested me too. My insurance company didn't care that I'd changed to winter tyres when I phoned them. They were interested in what wheels I was using, but given that I had a set identical to the ones I used for summer tyres there didn't change my premium at all.

[Shaw Tarse]

Some info about winter tyres & insurance http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/legal--motoring-a...

[dopamine]

Shaw Tarse - Interesting, but overall seems like they don't care provided the same wheels are used and the tyres are up to spec... the modification thing seems a bit rich, and I would like to see an insurance company standing in front of a judge arguing why they won't pay out because their client had fitted safer tyres during winter...

Interesting none-the-less.

Cheers

Travis

[RobM77]

dopamine said:

Shaw Tarse - Interesting, but overall seems like they don't care provided the same wheels are used and the tyres are up to spec... the modification thing seems a bit rich, and I would like to see an insurance company standing in front of a judge arguing why they won't pay out because their client had fitted safer tyres during winter...

Interesting none-the-less.

Cheers

Travis

It's not unheard of for insurers to put a modification premium on for uprating the brakes! Naturally, people who modify brakes normally do it because they intend to go faster, which on average leads to more accidents. However, generally speaking, insurance just works around high level statistics, so a 'modification' is all they gather stats for, whether that's adding a supercharger or putting safer tyres and brakes on, they don't care. Similarly, a '22' year old could be the most gifted driver in the world or a hooligan - they don't differentiate.

[German]

I think it could be a winner, but only if you have some large fleet customers from the outset. You could then expand your business based on demand (or not) from the general public, whilst still paying the bills and making a few quid. I'm not sure you'd have enough individual customers to make it work out of the box.

The guys we used were really successful in Munich, biggest customer was BMW, followed by a few of the local rental places. So 50 plus cars a day from the outset. I'm not sure what they did for the rest of the year though, I mean its relatively seasonal work.

[ging84]

RobM77 said:

dopamine said:

ging84 - Interesting comments... I am not familiar with what happened with the insurance companies - could you elaborate? Did they charge more if you changed on to winters?

ging84's comment interested me too. My insurance company didn't care that I'd changed to winter tyres when I phoned them. They were interested in what wheels I was using, but given that I had a set identical to the ones I used for summer tyres there didn't change my premium at all.

5-6 years ago people were often getting charged by insurers for telling they had fitted winter tyres, a lot of this seemed to be down to the whims of the front line staff in the call centres charging admin fees rather than any insurer actually having any specific underwriting criteria which loaded premiums for having winter tyres, so there were some very mixed messages being given out. The ABI stepped in to resolve the uncertainty and getting all the insurers to agree not to charge anyone extra for having winter tyres, but it's too late now the confusion remains out there.