Cancellation Periods on Car Insurance

A1dan_2

If you want short term car insurance (<2 weeks), is there anything to stop you from taking out a normal policy and then cancelling at the end of the "cooling off period", thus getting a couple of week's free insurance?

Apologies for de-ja-vu, I posted a much larger thread about this yesterday, but re-reading it it waffles on for ages before even asking this question, so I thought I'd be more concise and see if anybody knew!

Quentin

You can do this - but if you claim you would have to pay for the full 12 months.

Check the cancellation conditions regarding admin fees etc.

A1dan_2

I guess that would be OK, as a) you are legally covered and b) if the above happens, it's not much worse than if you have claim on your insuarance anyway.

lisyloo

I have done it before and got insurance entirely free but that was about 5 years ago.

I think you are likely to find cancellations fees now with most insurers, so you need to check for any charges.

A1dan_2

I guess the cancellation fees are key - I was working on the basis that teh "cooling off period" had to be totally free of charge.

I guess, extending the idea, without any fees at all you could then just move onto another company and, if you could be bothered to put the effort in every week or two, never pay for insurance if you don't claim.

This doesn't seem likely, so I guess there is has to be a catch!

Badger_Lady

The majority charge a cancellation fee during the cooling off period now. Depending on insurer, it might only be £25... cheap if you're looking for short-term insurance, very expensive as an alternative to annual insurance!

dacouch

If you have any type of claim in the cooling off period the entire annual premium is normally payable

lisyloo

I guess, extending the idea, without any fees at all you could then just move onto another company and, if you could be bothered to put the effort in every week or two, never pay for insurance if you don't claim.

I don't think you will find enough companies that do this free or low cost to do it for very long.

I did it once with house insurance when I was selling and I temporarily owned two homes for a short period, but I was only looking for insurance short term.
As Badget_Lady says it's not really a practical option if you need on-going insurance.

A1dan_2

lisyloo wrote: »

I did it once with house insurance when I was selling and I temporarily owned two homes for a short period, but I was only looking for insurance short term.

Yeah, that's my situation with the car.

I've bought a new one and am selling my old one privately, but getting 30 days of insurance, even from so called "short-term insurance specialists" costs most of a year's premium, which seems ridiculous.

My cheapest option is actually just adding it to the other car's existing policy for a month, but even that is costing the equivalent of 3 month's insurance for 30 days.

lisyloo

ok, I thought you were talking about doing it continually.

If you only want to do it short term then what you need to do is to compare the cancellation fees of this method with the cost of the short term insurance, bearing in mind you have a maximum of 14 days (minus any leeway you want).

Personally I would have factored these costs into my buying decision when deciding to buy before selling rather than (for example) trading the car in. You might not get such a good price trading in, but you now have to advertise, maintain, clean, insure and tax your car, so this should have been considered up front.

A1dan_2

lisyloo wrote: »

ok, I thought you were talking about doing it continually.

Nah, only brought that up as a hypothetical point, as an afterthought.

lisyloo wrote: »

Personally I would have factored these costs into my buying decision when deciding to buy before selling rather than (for example) trading the car in. You might not get such a good price trading in, but you now have to advertise, maintain, clean, insure and tax your car, so this should have been considered up front.

Oh, it was, and I'm looking to sell for at least a grand more than trade-in price.
But I have to admit I'd made the school-boy assumption that the insurance would be roughly proportional to the time it was insured for!