Should I inform Ins my son has passed his test?

soolin

Same here, had my son insured as a provisional driver and after passing his test the premium went up by over £1500 a year, which we couldn't afford so we had to withdraw him from the policy. We were with Direct Line.

Tried re insuring myself at renewal to include my son as a named driver and got the same sort of quotes from everyone, between £1000-£2000+ extra to have my son on my policy as a named driver. Ah the joys of a supposedly high risk London borough postcode and an 18 year old male driver. He has not been able to drive since passing his test, and neither has his younger brother. To keep up their driving skills though I pay for each of them to be insured on my car for a week each twice a year.

Just to add I've got a C3, so not exactly high risk.

iceburn

HAve you look into gettting him Pass Plus / Advance driving lessons? And buy a cheap banger for him to drive that is a lower insurance group. Advantage being that he will have his own set of wheels, and will also be earning his own NCD. Or you can look at this discussion
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1445229

Might be one way round it, but there might be shortfalls doing that way.

Inactive

Jakg wrote: »

Young drivers do crash, but very very few claim on the insurance - so theres no reason to charge £2,000 to insure a car which takes over 12 seconds to get to 60...

.

The " cost " of the insurance is more to do with the claims from the poor sods that they hit/kill/maim.:rolleyes:

jackieb

My son passed his test at 17 and we never put him on our insurance as it would have cost too much (an extra £400 with Direct Line. I should consider that as cheap after reading other posts!) He got a job with the council for a year and got to drive their vans - apart from tha he never drove again until he was 21 and managed to buy his own car and pay for his own insurance!
He is fully comp and has me and his dad down as named drivers. My son is down as the main driver and he was under £500 with elephant.co.uk. He's just bought another car - group 17 insurance and it has went up to over £600 - and he's still under 25yo.

A few youngsters I know have bought older cars and insured them 3rd party just to build up their no claims.

soolin

iceburn wrote: »

HAve you look into gettting him Pass Plus / Advance driving lessons? And buy a cheap banger for him to drive that is a lower insurance group. Advantage being that he will have his own set of wheels, and will also be earning his own NCD. Or you can look at this discussion
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1445229

Might be one way round it, but there might be shortfalls doing that way.

Eldest son has pass plus and it made not one iota difference to the insurance quotes we got.

We did look into buying a car just for sons but it seemed silly in the end to pay out on a car plus road tax MOTs etc when my own car sits outside unused half the time. I also wasn't prepared to give up my 3 year old C3 to drive a banger, the boys can take the bus!

(what a dreadful parent I am).

PurpleK8

soolin wrote: »

Ah the joys of a supposedly high risk London borough postcode and an 18 year old male driver. quote]

You could make them move to the country! Let them back home when they're over 25!

rev_henry

Jakg wrote: »

No - the car I drive (A Proton Wira 1.5 - a 1990's FWD Lancer which looks a bit different) is group 11 for some crazy reason (mmmm 84hp :rolleyes: ) and so if I swapped the cheapest quote I could get was for £3,500 from... Quinn again...

Young drivers do crash, but very very few claim on the insurance - so theres no reason to charge £2,000 to insure a car which takes over 12 seconds to get to 60...

EDIT - Quinn are cheap and have great benefits, but ALWAYS get a quote for when you've passed, too! Quinn wanted £3,500 for my car for Mr. Green, but would of only wanted £1,500 for Miss. Green - it's cheaper to cut the bloody thing off and then have it re-attached later :P

All I can say is look for "weird" cars - Saxo's, 106's etc are "high risk" because boy-racers have a nasty habit of doing silly speeds (100 is fine... in a sports car. In a car that weighs less than a ton and is made out of paper thing metal, it's !!!!ing lethal) in those sort of cars and writing them off - You *should* be able to get insured on an Astra or Focus for the same money as a little 106 or whatever. For ultimate Pimp Status the Volvo 340 and 460 are worth a look, too - Look for cars which tend to have few accidents, i.e. where the average owner is about 90.

Most interesting, thanks for that. Lol my thoughts entirely on the Mr Green Miss Green thing...

Lucky for me my Mum bought a 1.0 corsa with group 1 insurance.

Jakg

Just FYI - Vicars get the lowest quotes (usually) :P

soolin

PurpleK8 wrote: »

soolin wrote: »

Ah the joys of a supposedly high risk London borough postcode and an 18 year old male driver. quote]

You could make them move to the country! Let them back home when they're over 25!

Don't give me ideas. They are now at uni and if I thought getting insurance quotes before was difficult it is almost impossible now. You can almost hear the agent crying softly down the phone when they realise it is me again.

rev_henry

Jakg wrote: »

Just FYI - Vicars get the lowest quotes (usually) :P

Haha, Hmmm, yes hello Mr insurance company, I'm 17 and got ordained online, I am a Vicar, honest... Could I actually legally justify putting 'Minister of Religion' as an occupation?