quinn direct

I recently took out insurance with Quinn direct to add my daughter, a learner driver, to my car insrance. It was £580 compared to my current insurers quote of £1800. Quinn seam to specialise in youg drivers and usually offer the best rates for them. A lot of other insurance companies do not want the risk of young drivers so quote really high rates.

Be wary of Quinn / Quinn Direct. No direct experience but I hear many brokers cannot or will not touch them because their own professional indemnity insurers will not cover them if they work with Quinn.

This did apply to commercial property / liability covers (Quinn also do this type of cover) but it would be sufficient to deter me from using them.

Finally, do a search in this forum for Quinn. IIRC some people have had poor experiences in relation to claims.

They keep their costs low through two business principles.

Firstly, their insurance is like RyanAir flights, stripped to the bare bones so you'll not get a hire car, tow-a-way service, the bare minimum cover, no no claims protections or the usual fripperies you may want.

Secondly, their claims service is unique in that they allocate you a claims manager who comes and sees you and also sees the other party involved as well as the police/other services involved and then amicably resolves the situation by writing you a cheque once the investigator has decided who's to blame, etc.

What it means is that they try to nip claims in the bud so if your fault and you injured someone they'll pay them off to keep it out of the courts and pay for your repairs also. Fraudulent claims are nigh-impossible to get through as they'll see through any scams as they physically intgerview everyone involved in the incident. This keeps their overheads low as they don't deal with 'solicitors' or ambulance chasing firms and the like - dealing directly with the parties invovled and getting it solved as quickly as possible to nip those 'whiplash' injuries into touch, etc.

The claim managers are paid on a commission only basis so they get paid £100-£200 (depending upon the severity of the claim -ie, one car, two cars, multiple pile-up, etc) for resolving the claims within 7 days. You'll get a cheuqe very quickly provided it's a straight accident so to speak.

So basically, nothing wrong with the service and are very cheap but they are different to the mainstream so don't expect pampering and luxury or try to scam them but at least your kids can be covered, legally and cheaply.

Quinn Direct is a massive company in Ireland - started off as a quarry and stone extractor, then property developer then insurance and everything else as well. Also own's the De Vere Belfry hotel/golf course as well as many other posh hotels around the world. They are not small or fly-by-night and perfectly legitimate - there HQ should hopefully still be in Salford Quays, Manchester.

Yes - good old Quinn eh !! - if you look at history on this insurance site there are many references made of them. Not all good i'm afraid - the problem with insurance is that you just don't know what you are getting until its claim time. Unlike almost anything else, with insurance you are "buying" a promise, and that promise won't take effect until you call upon them to deal with your claim - many have had bad experiences.

As has been said also their cover has many restrictions and their comprehensive cover is really not comprehensive at all when looked at side by side with household name insurers.

The other interesting point is that if you compare, generally speaking, Quinn premiums with "the norm" you will find a substantial difference, the question needs to be asked Why ? - if I was the underwriter of Quinn my reseach/quote comparisons would show nowhere near the variations as is currently the case. In other words do Quinn know something all the others don't regarding risk assessment ? - if the market rate for a risk is for example £850 and the market is circa that amount, who in their right mind would offer cover at £500 ? - indeed they could charge £800 and still get the business. Still they are based in Ireland so perhaps that's the givaway

I had a bad experience with Quinn Direct.

I was/am insured with Direct Line and the 3rd party who went into me was with Quinn. I provided all documents, proof, photo of the accident but heard nothing from Direct Line for a long time. I phoned them up and they said that they keep chasing up QD but that they don't reply to them.

In the end DL absorbed the loss of my claim (fully comp.) as it wasn't worth their time to keep chasing Quinn Direct up. If that's how they operate in general I woudn't touch them with a bargepole :mad:.