Updated Cheap Car Insurance guide - new system

pastaman123 wrote: »

How do you clear cookies?

Use this:

http://www.cybertronsoft.com/products/privacy-eraser/

:cool::cool:

Good result today for my hubby. He got quoted a renewal for his insurance of £415 - actually a reduction of £45 from last year. He went on all the comparison sites and the only thing cheaper, was, ironically, the same company for a new customer at 369.44. He rang to ask them to do the same price as the new customer deal and they knocked another £25 quid off that price. Result!

We've just gone through the Direct Line hoops, laboriously filling in an online form which wants us to state the value of our 3-year-old car --why? The insurer will only pay out, in the event of total loss, at the figure the insurer itself decides is the market value, not us -- and then gives us an idiotic "options" menu to check in regard to any accident we've had in the past 12 months.

Well, um, yeah. A vehicle collision did indeed occur. Except we weren't even there: our car was parked in a supermarket car park and when we returned from shopping, we discovered that some unknown berk had gouged one side of it with his / her vehicle, either getting into the adjacent space or exiting from it.

DirectLine gave us but one option in regard to this: we had to tick the box that said there'd been a no-blame accident caused by a third party and that recovery was still O/S.

What, one might ask, is O/S? Still outstanding?? But it'll ALWAYS be still outstanding. We have no idea who perpetrated the damage, nor does our existing insurer. As it was, we filed a claim under our comprehensive policy (with 6 years' NCD, according to our existing insurer's NCD calculations) and chucked in £200 excess towards the cost of repairing our car. (Incidentally, our existing insurer, Co-op, was absolutely. . . brilliant in handling this claim: very sympathetic, very supportive, and very, very quick in sorting everything out.)

Car park scrapes involving absolutely unknown third parties are a commonplace in the UK and DirectLine well knows that. Yet in allowing no way at all for a proposer to actually provide details, DirectLine hasn't a clue what the accident was nor why recovery isn't so much "O/S" as utterly impossible. We have, in effect, had to confirm that we have had an accident -- when we haven't: our car was hit when we weren't anywhere near it -- and to indicate that in some way or other, "recovery" of costs is still pending. What nonsense. If Direct:Line was remotely interested in developing accurate data on which to assess risk, it would do as other insurers do and ask for that information. But evidently, that's too much trouble.

We were drawn to DirectLine because of the way its current offer is highlighted in the MSE car insurance article: a £45 Amazon Gift Voucher. Yes, well . . . by some stunning coincidence, we've now established, from competitive quotes, that DirectLine's quote is -- you guessed it -- around £50 more than anyone else's. Including the renewal premium being sought by our existing insurer. Could it be that DirectLine is inflating its quotes by the amount it claims to be offering back to new policy holders? Perish the thought. . .