Car insurance: Commuting definition?

greenslime

Hello, I am in need of some advice. I recently scrapped my old car under the government scrappage scheme and have been looking for some insurance. Being only 19 my quotes have been in the region of £1,100-£1,500. However, I did find that Aviva quoted me £963.

My problem is that I don't know whether I should put Social, Domestic and Pleasure or Social, Domestic, Pleasure and Commuting. On the Aviva website it says this about SDP&C "This includes regular travel to and from work by any named driver on the policy" - I work, but I do not work full time. I work on an as and when needed basis, so I worked in December but might only work 1 week in January, none in February and all of March. So as you can see, this is not regular travel to and from work. Which one should I put down and if I have put down SDP and have an accident to work am I still covered?

Thanks

Proc

Working every-other month sounds pretty regular to me.

You need SDP+C.

_Andy_

Have you rung the insurer to ask?

greenslime

Going to ring the insurers tomorrow to see what they will say.

Proc I don't think you are feeling me on this. I work on a as and when needed basis. So I don't work every other month which does not make it regular. I work when they need me. If you didn't understand in my first post see below.

In 2009 the layout of my work was like this:

January - No work
February - 1 Week working
March - No Work
April - No work
May - No work
June - worked for a couple of weeks
July - worked for 3 weeks
August - worked about 3 weeks
September - worked all month
October - no work
November - no work
December - worked all month

So as you can appreciate, I do not work on a regular basis, as I said previously, on an as and when needed basis. Not every other month. I hope this makes things clearer if I hadn't explained them well before.

By the way, is there set definitions of things like SDP, SDP&C, Business etc. like in an insurance act or set out by the Association of British Insurers or something like that?

Quote

What difference does it make to the premium?

iamana1ias

What do you do the rest of the time? If you drive to/from college then that's commuting too.

dogbot

It is likely that it will make little or not difference to your premium, so best just to go for SDP+C anyway. As indicated above, driving to college is also commuting. If at university, then an occasional drive to campus could be classed as the same, though it gets murky. Best to just go for it.

Anihilator

More to the point if you work as and when is it at various different sites. If so I would suggest this is business use and not just commuting.

missile

It would be cheaper to commute by taxi

lisyloo

Have you considered other forms of transport?- as Missile suggests.

I don't own a car and it's much cheaper without one.
Hiring a car cost £30 a day, but if you don't need it most of the time, then it's cheaper than having all the costs of unkeep of a car.

MOT, tax, insurance, repairs, servicing, petrol, parking, recovery etc.

Walking, cycling etc. are cheaper still, though I appreciate that's not possible for all journeys and all weathers.

saveforlater

I'm just about to renew my motor policy much cheaper with a different company: because I drive to part-time employment only once a fortnight didn't consider it was worth declaring for my on-line quote (I'm an ex insurance man). Now there's all the pertinent stuff above re this 'new' definition! Perhaps insurers need to define commute as daily travel to/from work if they want a legitimate reason to charge a higher premium otherwise, as above, there seem to be plenty of imaginitive ways round the problem