Budget Car Insurance

Gedk

Just thought I'd post a little warning. I took out a Budget Insurance policy in May 2009 and then added a second driver in July 2009 - for which an administration fee was charged, naturally.

I've decided to sell the vehicle in question, however when I called up on May 22nd to advise them not to renew my policy they told me that the policy wasn't due to expire until July 2010. It turns out when I added a second driver they changed under writer and started a new 12 month policy, wether they told me this or not at the time I can't remember but the scandalous thing is they then wanted to charge me a cancellation fee, plus the remaining cost of the policy, plus a 'Short-Term Rate' since they are not 'Short-Term' insurance providers, even though at this point my original policy was entering it's 13 month!

Basically, unless you know you are going to have a straight forward hassle free, change free 12 months, I strongly recommend NOT choosing Budget. It may seem like a cheaper option but they truly are the Ryanair of car insurance and you'll pay for it in the long run with any changes you may want to make to your policy. Far better to pay a little bit extra and hopefully get better service.

Kilty_2

Surely you noticed them charging you quite a lot extra for this - more than just an admin fee?

KillerWatt

We've been with Budget for 3 years now (cheapest of the lot by a country mile), and every time we have decided to move the goalposts they have made it abundantly clear of what we can expect.

Obviously it's "horses for courses", but I'll bet that for every dissatisfied customer a company has, they have 50 others who are satisfied (the happy ones never say anything).


PS

On a side note, they record all of their calls - so if they didn't tell you that you are entering in to a new contract when you made the change to the policy, then you have them by the gonads.

Gedk

Kilty wrote: »

Surely you noticed them charging you quite a lot extra for this - more than just an admin fee?

They charged an admin fee to add an additional driver and then they increased the amount of my monthly payments, I just assumed that this was as a result of having a second driver.

They are going back to listen to my call and I am waiting on them to contact me back with the outcome.

I am sure many people are happy with them, I think if you aren't going to make changes to your policy then you have every reason to be happy with the cheaper car insurance. If, however, there's a possibility that you might be making a change, like adding a driver halfway through the year, you could find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to wait a further year before the policy expires (in other words 18 months in total to get 1 year no claims). And heaven forbid if you wanted to add a third driver later.

I should also say that this was a commerical policy for a business vehicle where changes are far more likely, so in any case it wasn't clear when I orginally took out the policy that adding a driver might result in a change of underwriter and lock me in for another year.

gilbert_and_sullivan

Cheap insurance is brilliant.

Until you claim, then you find out why it's cheap.