Single Day Car Insurance & SORN

[Embryonic]

I'm collecting my new car next week, but haven't yet sold my old one. I intend to transfer my insurance policy to the new car and then insure my old one on a one-off basis; e.g. if a potential buyer comes to view/buy it.


Can anyone recommend a decent company to do this for a reasonable price? I've found a couple on the net but if anyone has any personal experiences then I'd be glad to hear them.




Another thing - I understand that to do this legally (i.e, cancel the insurance) I have to SORN the car, but if I need to re-instate the insurance for that one day, can I quickly "un-SORN" it for that new-buyer test drive? The car has plenty of tax remaining. I don't really understand how this whole thing would work to be honest.


Any advice on the best way to go about this?

Thanks.

[McSam]

There's no quick way to un-SORN the car without buying a whole six months' tax, one month of which you will then lose when you try to refund it again. Basically, taxing it for a day is as difficult as it is expensive.

My recommendation is to keep your old car insured as it is now, and insure your new one weekly, two-weekly or monthly by adding it onto your current policy as a temporary car. That's actually what I'm doing right now, selling the Audi and insuring the BMW every two weeks as an add-on to the Audi's policy. When the Audi sells, I shall transfer the policy to the BMW permanently, but for now this is the easiest way!

In case you're worried it's going to be expensive, I just paid £39 to insure the BMW for two weeks, when its annual premium would be about £950 (or £36.50 for two weeks), so it really isn't a big worry! Speak to your insurers to get prices and you might be surprised how easy it can be

[Embryonic]

Excellent advice, thank you very much.

Do all insurers run this temporary cover, allowing parallel insurance cover?



Sounds like I need to call Adrian Flux tomorrow and explain the situation.

[McSam]

No trouble

I'm not sure all insurers do it - I'm with the Admiral Group and get up to 120 days' temporary cover in a year, which is quite impressive - but certainly most seem to appreciate that this problem does come up sometimes and there needs to be a reasonable way around it. It's also designed for emergency use of family members' cars and the like. You can run into problems if the car is owned by somebody else who isn't immediate family, they usually don't like that much, but with your own car in such a legitimate situation it should be fine!

[S6PNJ]

I think most people have this or a similar issue when changing cars. On a previous buy/sell I tried everywhere to find someone who would insure me for 1 week on my new car with my old insurance on my old car - can't be done I was told (by my current insurer). After much huffing and puffing I said sod it - I'll just get the new car insured and worry about the old one later - ok they said, do you want 1 weeks complimentary insurance on your old car at the same time? What you fkers? I'd just been asking them for that but maybe in reverse.

I've since found out that if you HPI a car, you get 1 week's free insurance on it, so that might help you out. Best check in case they've stopped that now though - nope, I've just looked and they still do 7 days insurance through Aviva!

Then all you need to worry about is the tax and when you send your old one off for refund or whatever you'll be doing with it.

[Embryonic]

McSam said:

No trouble

I'm not sure all insurers do it - I'm with the Admiral Group and get up to 120 days' temporary cover in a year, which is quite impressive - but certainly most seem to appreciate that this problem does come up sometimes and there needs to be a reasonable way around it. It's also designed for emergency use of family members' cars and the like. You can run into problems if the car is owned by somebody else who isn't immediate family, they usually don't like that much, but with your own car in such a legitimate situation it should be fine!

This is all news to me, so thanks again. Definitely worth a phone call in the morning.

S6PNJ said:

I think most people have this or a similar issue when changing cars. On a previous buy/sell I tried everywhere to find someone who would insure me for 1 week on my new car with my old insurance on my old car - can't be done I was told (by my current insurer). After much huffing and puffing I said sod it - I'll just get the new car insured and worry about the old one later - ok they said, do you want 1 weeks complimentary insurance on your old car at the same time? What you fkers? I'd just been asking them for that but maybe in reverse.

I've since found out that if you HPI a car, you get 1 week's free insurance on it, so that might help you out. Best check in case they've stopped that now though - nope, I've just looked and they still do 7 days insurance through Aviva!

Then all you need to worry about is the tax and when you send your old one off for refund or whatever you'll be doing with it.

I suppose it probably is fairly common, but during my 12 years of driving (and 11 cars) I haven't actually faced this situation before.

I'm really trying to avoid paying a ridiculous insurance figure on the new car. My old car has my NCB tied to it which obviously cannot be used on the new one simultaneously, and my other currently owned car (which I'm also selling) is on a classic policy so doesn't have any accruing NCB attached to it anyway.

I'll look into the HPI thing, thanks for the tip.