More excess better?

vaio

Mark_Hewitt wrote: »

Yes! They won't pay the first £1,000. By definition they won't pay a claim less than £1,000 either.

But remember this only applies to the policyholder, a third party making a claim against the policy will be subject to different rules, and quite often not subject to any excess. The policyholder may or may not have to pay the excess in that instance.

At the risk of dragging this back on topic, claims against third parties are never subject to an excess

The other thing worth noting (from an MSE pov) is that often FC comp insurance with a huge excess is cheaper than TPFT as the huge excess effectively turns the FC into TPFT and you also get the benefit of FC add ons like windscreen cover.

My dear old dad has a Fiesta worth maybe £200 (if he’d just filled the tank) and the cheapest insurance was FC with a £1000 excess

SandC

Worth noting that if you do have a fault claim, the repairing garage will not release your repaired car without receiving from you the excess due. The rest they get from the insurer, obviously.

So do bear in mind that if £500 looks tasty there is always a chance that you could be at fault in a bump and then you'd have to find that cash or live without your car until you can.

I have the lowest excess I can - £100 usually. But I'm oldish and drive a cruddy little car that isn't worth much so the premiums are not excessive either way.

Mark_Hewitt

vaio wrote: »

My dear old dad has a Fiesta worth maybe £200 (if he’d just filled the tank) and the cheapest insurance was FC with a £1000 excess

On some insurance sites I've seen they only allow you FC cover if the car is worth in excess of a certain amount.

vaio

yep, I'm sure that is the case with some companies but my point was that other companies will provide more cover for less money if you choose FC with an excess of more than the car's value (x 5 in my dads case)

No doubt there are sound actuarial reasons for it but from a common sense pov it’s nonsense.