Van Insurance

sebdangerfield

A few months ago you may have read my bangernomics thread. Ultimately I sold a fairly nice car I'd wanted for a very long time to buy a totally crap van in order to drive to trail heads with my mountain bike, sleep in it and drive it on silly boy's holidays in the hope of some adventure.

The time's come for me to renew the insurance on the van. The problem I have is the insurance for the van (after some considerable shopping around) is £380 but the other car I didn't sell and still need to insure, an Alfa 147 GTA is only £350, with the same no claim's discount. This seems totally disproprtionate. The car I sold was a group 20 and worth well over £30k but was only ever around £750 per year to insure. Does anyone else own a van and find the insurance is sky high?

The van is a Citroen Berlingo 1.9 desiesel from 2002. Any advice appreciated.

Cool_Username

Possibly due to insurance companies assuming that a van will be used for business use - delivering or lugging loads around and places a greater risk on that sort of use? Or because of the possibility that the van could be broken into day or night and equipment stolen?

Just guessing though.

KeithP

Maybe they think you can inflict more damage on someone else with your van.

The value of the insured vehicle is only part of the risk.

I also think that you can only get NCD on one vehicle, but may be wrong on this point.

robredz

KeithP wrote: »

I also think that you can only get NCD on one vehicle, but may be wrong on this point.

I have a policy for a van and a car, each policy has it's own no claims discount. accrued independent of each other, but the van is around £100 more to insure than the car, the car is group 4 and the van ( an Iveco Daily) group 15.

But yes a van will be proportionately more expensive than a car, due to various factors relating to business use, and insurance group. Strictly private only use of a van is a slightly alien concept to insurers.

rev_henry

Cool_Username wrote: »

Possibly due to insurance companies assuming that a van will be used for business use - delivering or lugging loads around and places a greater risk on that sort of use? Or because of the possibility that the van could be broken into day or night and equipment stolen?

Just guessing though.

When you fill out quote forms for a van it asks what kind of use it is, presumably the OP is just putting SD&P?
Maybe try admiral multicar, although I don't know if they'd do it with a van in the mix.

Hammyman

Cool_Username wrote: »

Possibly due to insurance companies assuming that a van will be used for business use

I'm with you on that. As a mechanic, I had horrendous insurance quotes because they arbitrarily decided I'd be doing work in it. A phone call sorted that.

rictus123

Total opposite for me. Had a van that wasnt for buisness uses. Cars coming in cheapest quotes at 17 around £1800, a 1.9 Seat Inca was £700 fully comp. Got rid a few months ago and got a renewal through for insurance, its gone up £90, the only difference being i have a years no claims. Hopefully my motorbike insurance wont be as high as that.

dodo69

I was in the same position recently when I was given an old Renault Extra van that I got through it PSV for the grand total of £8.51. I was horrified by the cost of insurance (more than my Volvo) but went to the silly Go Compare website and ended up getting it insured third party fire and theft for £195. Think it was with RSA and autovan.net. Hope this helps.

rev_henry

rictus123 wrote: »

Total opposite for me. Had a van that wasnt for buisness uses. Cars coming in cheapest quotes at 17 around £1800, a 1.9 Seat Inca was £700 fully comp. Got rid a few months ago and got a renewal through for insurance, its gone up £90, the only difference being i have a years no claims. Hopefully my motorbike insurance wont be as high as that.

I investigated that when I was buying my car (also 18) but it was slightly more expensive. Maybe I should have looked at a few more different vans.

rictus123

rev_henry wrote: »

I investigated that when I was buying my car (also 18) but it was slightly more expensive. Maybe I should have looked at a few more different vans.

Well a 1.7 astra van was £2,000. Dont know why it was so cheap tbh.

sebdangerfield

Thanks for the replies so far. I have told the companies that it's just to be used for SDP&C, the can't even be used to carry anything other than bikes now as I've ply lined it and put in two saris traps to carry the bikes. I've got 7 years no claims on the Alfa and 7 seperately on the Noble which I've transfered to the van. I'm just shocked that it can be more than the Alfa. I've tried go compare but for some reason, third party comes out at more than fully comp. I'll try direct with a few companies and report back.