Arnold Clarks 3 year return to invoice GAP insurance

DomTom

Anyone know anything about it? The salesmen briefly mentioned it to me and i said i'd look into it. It seems tempting but too good to be true. £200 gets me 3 years "money back guarantee" if my car is written off or stolen. Ie i get the list price back.

Could anyone help?

dacouch

It's called Gap Insurance or more precisely Vehicle Replacement Insurance or Return To Invoice Insurance.

You will be able to buy it much cheaper online than from the car dealer, do a search of forums for "gap insurance" and you will find a few recent posts of MSE members discussing it.

P.S It is not a guarantee it's an insurance product and there are situations they will not pay out. He should not be telling you it is a guarantee as he is miss selling it, for a laugh ask him to confirm in writing that it is a money back guarantee if it is written off or stolen and see if he does...

DomTom

he said and i quote "there are no get out clauses". I didn't believe him. Thanks for the info, I will look into it further.

dacouch

The FSA have strict rules on selling insurance, he cannot tell you there are no get out clauses as there clearly are. Arnold Clark don't have a great reputation (They have quote a few threads on MSE, you can find them by doing a forum search).

Here is the selling broucher for the Arnold Clark Vehicle Replacement Insurance http://www.arnoldclark.com/images/servicing/pdfs/2010/January/VRi_040110.pdf note the get out clauses

One of the main clauses he has not pointed out to you is that if your Insurer does not value you your car at what the VRI insurers define to be the Glasses value then there can be a shortfall. Another main exclusion is if your car insurers don't pay out for some reason eg you have not disclosed information then the VRI will normally not pay their portion.

I can't find a policy document so cannot go through the other exclusions and find out which Insurer it's with

DomTom

that seems a bit unjust. how would it be anyones fault if the insurance company doesn't pay out at the Glasses value? I'm with churchill unfortunately so i don't know how reliable they are... wish i'd stuck with NFU now.

Hintza

Is it not just the difference (GAP) in what your insurer pays out and the cost of replacing the vehicle.

dacouch

DomTom wrote: »

that seems a bit unjust. how would it be anyones fault if the insurance company doesn't pay out at the Glasses value? I'm with churchill unfortunately so i don't know how reliable they are... wish i'd stuck with NFU now.

It can happen that the VRI Insurer do not agree that the Motor Insurer paid the correct value for the vehicle as it's in their interest for the motor Insurer to give the car the highest value.

Churchill are not to bad an Insurer, if you write the car off in the first year of ownership from new (You being the first registered keeper) Churchill will replace it with a new car anyway. NFU are unusual in that they replace it with a new one in the first TWO years of ownership from new (You being the first RK)