what the hell is going on with insurance?
Discussion
glacierblue said:
renewal time again 
and it seems that my insurance is going up, for no reason apart from i now have full no claims bonus, am now 30 years old, and have had points removed off my licence. Anybody else having the same problem, or no anywhere doidng it cheap (not a-plan)?
A-Plan did me one hell of a good deal with my renewal - £400 fully comp. and it seems that my insurance is going up, for no reason apart from i now have full no claims bonus, am now 30 years old, and have had points removed off my licence. Anybody else having the same problem, or no anywhere doidng it cheap (not a-plan)?I have just renewed my insurance and had to change insurer. I was with Chris Knott last year and this years renewal was £50 more than last year, with no incidents/points etc..
I was all set to go to Autotorque as they gave me a cracking quote last year subject to the car being garaged - it wasn't last year, but it is now. Anyway turns out they've gone t1t's up.
Went back to A-Plan in the end - £599 fully comp, protected NCD, me(30) plus partner (26) for S1 111S, 8000 miles/yr
I was surprised (and disappointed) that having the car garaged only reduced the premium by about £20!
It also seems that once the drivers on the policy are over 25, they then start bleating on that ooh it would be cheaper if drivers were over 30...not a very good sales tactic when you can't actually do anything about your age.
A absolutely hate dealing with car insurance, I hate all the condescending questions about how much experience me & my partner have had driving the car, how often partner drives it, does he drive another car...I know it all helps with underwriters making decisions etc, but it's just frikking annoying having to take up so much time.
As always I left it right to the last minute to get it organised...pain over for another year though now - phew!
I was all set to go to Autotorque as they gave me a cracking quote last year subject to the car being garaged - it wasn't last year, but it is now. Anyway turns out they've gone t1t's up.
Went back to A-Plan in the end - £599 fully comp, protected NCD, me(30) plus partner (26) for S1 111S, 8000 miles/yr
I was surprised (and disappointed) that having the car garaged only reduced the premium by about £20!
It also seems that once the drivers on the policy are over 25, they then start bleating on that ooh it would be cheaper if drivers were over 30...not a very good sales tactic when you can't actually do anything about your age.
A absolutely hate dealing with car insurance, I hate all the condescending questions about how much experience me & my partner have had driving the car, how often partner drives it, does he drive another car...I know it all helps with underwriters making decisions etc, but it's just frikking annoying having to take up so much time.
As always I left it right to the last minute to get it organised...pain over for another year though now - phew!
Try this site:
www.moneysupermarket.com
The general trick of insurers now is to offer big introductory bonuses to new customers only, and moneysupermarket seem to get another 10% on top of that. They then stuff you at renewal, as they didn't really mean it with the discounts - just to get you on board.
In my case, my renewal put my premium up £30. Got it for £80 cheaper and ohhh so ironically with the SAME company, through moneysuper as a new customer. ( I let my policy lapse, then came back as a 'new customer' through moneysuper a week later )
Very annoying but hey, just play them at their own game.
www.moneysupermarket.com
The general trick of insurers now is to offer big introductory bonuses to new customers only, and moneysupermarket seem to get another 10% on top of that. They then stuff you at renewal, as they didn't really mean it with the discounts - just to get you on board.
In my case, my renewal put my premium up £30. Got it for £80 cheaper and ohhh so ironically with the SAME company, through moneysuper as a new customer. ( I let my policy lapse, then came back as a 'new customer' through moneysuper a week later )
Very annoying but hey, just play them at their own game.
yeah, they all have different guidelines and rules...that change each year depending on what sort of business they need to attract, so as said above - you need to shop around each year to get the best price
some of them have different criteria that make a difference too e.g. we moved house over a year ago, and the cars were now garaged and we have a much lower risk postcode...should be a good saving I hear you say
so 1 insurer gave a small discount back on the TVR as it was near to the end of the policy, my Elise went down by 30% and a nice check arrived that week (was with CCI)..then Diamond who were insuring the ASton "sorry theres no difference - bye" ..assholes
so no hard and fast rules im afraid , like having full NCB and being older and them sending you a higher renewal is just normal for some of them...and I guess that there are a lot of people who can afford it, dont care and just take the first offer they get as its less hassle...and thats what their hoping for - only if you threaten to leave do they start to offer you better quotes
some of them have different criteria that make a difference too e.g. we moved house over a year ago, and the cars were now garaged and we have a much lower risk postcode...should be a good saving I hear you say
so 1 insurer gave a small discount back on the TVR as it was near to the end of the policy, my Elise went down by 30% and a nice check arrived that week (was with CCI)..then Diamond who were insuring the ASton "sorry theres no difference - bye" ..assholes
so no hard and fast rules im afraid , like having full NCB and being older and them sending you a higher renewal is just normal for some of them...and I guess that there are a lot of people who can afford it, dont care and just take the first offer they get as its less hassle...and thats what their hoping for - only if you threaten to leave do they start to offer you better quotes
Try Admiral 2 car policy, you can split the start dates, so no need to cancel the other one yet, then they both end at the same time. I got the R and an astra sxi for just over 500, it has to be worth a go. Also was loaded for having kids under 16, don't know why, I never let them drive!!!!!! But the system that loaded me did not want to know their ages, so the loading would never have come off once they were declared. Well He passed 17 this year, so I was being loaded for no reason, took a while to argue the toss with them, but it saved me £30. I found out by doing an internet quote with and without declaring the kids, quite sneakey of them really.
I too dislike renewing my insurance.
Last year I tried that site and the cheapest quote was my own insurance company Liverpool Victoria by over £200!!!
When I tried to get the insurance changed, they put me through to their "retention department" who denied the quote was given and offered £50 off.
I made a formal complaint and was told the money supermarket makes "assumptions" and when the form was filled in again using LV's own questions guess what over £100 more expensive than the online quote.
I then had to put up with emails for insurance companies offering cheap quotes!!!!
So these websites are only good for gettin a feel of what might be available if you shop around, getting low cost/cheap, call it what youlike, insurance is another matter.
This year was (only a few days ago) was just as bad but after only 1hr.40mins of complaining about the renewal premium did i get a discount from £446 to £330!!! by taking out a new policy with the same company.
It is like mortgages in the old days, the best deals were for new customers only.
Last year I tried that site and the cheapest quote was my own insurance company Liverpool Victoria by over £200!!!
When I tried to get the insurance changed, they put me through to their "retention department" who denied the quote was given and offered £50 off.
I made a formal complaint and was told the money supermarket makes "assumptions" and when the form was filled in again using LV's own questions guess what over £100 more expensive than the online quote.
I then had to put up with emails for insurance companies offering cheap quotes!!!!
So these websites are only good for gettin a feel of what might be available if you shop around, getting low cost/cheap, call it what youlike, insurance is another matter.
This year was (only a few days ago) was just as bad but after only 1hr.40mins of complaining about the renewal premium did i get a discount from £446 to £330!!! by taking out a new policy with the same company.
It is like mortgages in the old days, the best deals were for new customers only.
jondude said:
Try this site:
www.moneysupermarket.com
The general trick of insurers now is to offer big introductory bonuses to new customers only, and moneysupermarket seem to get another 10% on top of that. They then stuff you at renewal, as they didn't really mean it with the discounts - just to get you on board.
In my case, my renewal put my premium up £30. Got it for £80 cheaper and ohhh so ironically with the SAME company, through moneysuper as a new customer. ( I let my policy lapse, then came back as a 'new customer' through moneysuper a week later )
Very annoying but hey, just play them at their own game.
www.moneysupermarket.com
The general trick of insurers now is to offer big introductory bonuses to new customers only, and moneysupermarket seem to get another 10% on top of that. They then stuff you at renewal, as they didn't really mean it with the discounts - just to get you on board.
In my case, my renewal put my premium up £30. Got it for £80 cheaper and ohhh so ironically with the SAME company, through moneysuper as a new customer. ( I let my policy lapse, then came back as a 'new customer' through moneysuper a week later )
Very annoying but hey, just play them at their own game.
As someone who works in the industry my view may seem bias but for what it's worth here it it.
Websites that compare quotes are fine providing (and this is always true with insurance)that you read all the small print and assumptions very carefully. As brokers we always look for the cheapest deal each year for our customers and at the risk of "s
gging off" some of the opposition, many of the direct insurers (as some of you have found) have differential rates for new and existing customers. Having "persuaded" you when you took the policy out that they were cheap they hope you won't shop around.
We offer ALL our cusomers (new or existing) the same rate.
Websites that compare quotes are fine providing (and this is always true with insurance)that you read all the small print and assumptions very carefully. As brokers we always look for the cheapest deal each year for our customers and at the risk of "s
gging off" some of the opposition, many of the direct insurers (as some of you have found) have differential rates for new and existing customers. Having "persuaded" you when you took the policy out that they were cheap they hope you won't shop around.We offer ALL our cusomers (new or existing) the same rate.
Apart from uninsured drivers its also worth bearing in mind that often the major cost in a claim is not the repair to the car but hire costs and personal injury claims. The willingness of some to go to solicitors (often encouraged by unscrupulous accident management cos - not all are bad btw) for 'whiplash' doesn't help either. Next time you need a replacedment car have a think about who's really paying for it and the next time you hear someone bragging about the insurance payout for their 'injury' remind them who's paying.
Fatrat said:
As someone who works in the industry my view may seem bias but for what it's worth here it it.
Websites that compare quotes are fine providing (and this is always true with insurance)that you read all the small print and assumptions very carefully. As brokers we always look for the cheapest deal each year for our customers and at the risk of "sgging off" some of the opposition, many of the direct insurers (as some of you have found) have differential rates for new and existing customers. Having "persuaded" you when you took the policy out that they were cheap they hope you won't shop around.
We offer ALL our cusomers (new or existing) the same rate.
we actually used one of those supermarket style compare websites for the 1st time a couple of months back. the lowest quote came up from an unheard of broker, and it was £100 cheaper than one of the specialists Ive used before (and that managed an unfortunate claim without fuss earlier in the year) ..so we ring up cheap broker, get a clueless kid on the phone, who then queries what we input to get said quote and promises to ring back as he cant get it to the same figure..... Four days later we went with the specialist insurer who were their usual helpful, courteous selves...so as usual, cheap is not necessarily the best...I would dread to think about how the first broker would manage a complex claim Websites that compare quotes are fine providing (and this is always true with insurance)that you read all the small print and assumptions very carefully. As brokers we always look for the cheapest deal each year for our customers and at the risk of "s
gging off" some of the opposition, many of the direct insurers (as some of you have found) have differential rates for new and existing customers. Having "persuaded" you when you took the policy out that they were cheap they hope you won't shop around.We offer ALL our cusomers (new or existing) the same rate.
chris7676 said:
Or perhaps the reflexion of the financial crisis ?
...and that'll be the excuse for many a scam over the next few years. I'm still waiting for the reduction that should have happened after they tripled insurance costs in the eighties due to a spate of car thefts that has now subsided.
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