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Young Drivers' Car Insurance Discussion

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  • hi having a prob getting insurance on my 17 yr old sons car, one thing i became aware of yesterday is according to the insurance companys database the car (1.2 seat ibiza) is a 3door and they say it is in a group 7, yet its a 5 door i know i can see them all lol, and according to parkers, and seat and other places i have checked its actually in group 5 this must be making some differance to the quotes im recieving but im not sure what i can do about it :( any ideas ? the model we have was only made for a few months in 2002 then it had a facelift, but because its 2003 registered they seem to think its the new version ?
  • Like others on here, we've had a nightmare in getting insurance for our 17yr old. I went onto autotrader and looked at cars with small engines such as a 0.8cc Matiz, Peugeot 106 etc then went onto all the comparison sites, and all the insurance companies that aren't. I checked supermarkets too and became goggle eyed and phone weary in the end.

    A 1999 Matiz came in at £1,400 and a 106 was £1690 cheapest price.
    We then went to look at cars and found because of my son's height, he doesn't fit in the Matiz!!
    Then when looking in another garage, he saw a mint condition Rover 25 1.6 that looked well looked after compared to the ropey and battered 106's and VW Polo's we looked at.

    We did a variety of entries to get quote, from putting my name on the ownership of the car and son as a named driver, sometimes fully comprehensive was cheaper than 3rd party too. sometimes it was cheaper if I said the car was kept on the road overnight, rather then the drive.
    I even checked to see how much it cost after he would qualify and found insurance dropped by £300 if he passed the IAM test, but no change if he took PassPlus or RoSPA!!!

    I came home, checked all the insurance companies again for the Rover 25, expecting it to be more expensive because it was a 1.6L engine but was quite surprised to see that it was cheaper than most of the smaller engine cars I'd looked at.

    I then saw an advert for Endsleigh who do young driver policies. I went onto their website and had a quote for the Rover 25 for...wait for it....
    £18,760 :eek::rotfl::rotfl::T Yep, almost £19k for a £800 car!! No wonder so many drive without insurance :mad:

    I was so incensed that I made a comment on their Facebook page which got an immediate response to contact them. I had a nice lady call me at home who promised to look into it and call me back in the next couple of days....that was 6 weeks ago and I've not heard from them since!!

    So Endseligh get the big :naughty: thumbs down from me for not bothering to contact me again, they've also lost a sale.

    I've since written to my local MP about Endsliegh's quote (I checked it, I didn't put down my son's car was a 4 Litre Range Rover Vogue or anything by mistake!) and said that I know for a fact care companies are struggling to find young people with a car to work in the community (18yr old fresh out of Health and social care at college) and how my nephews, that live in the sticks in the country only have one bus a week pass by and totally rely on other transport.

    I did get a lovely reply from my MP and a list of things the government are currently implementing to try to reduce the likes of bogus claims etc and setting up of an insurance fraud agency. He was gobsmacked with Endsleigh's quote and was bringing it up with a government minister. I've since had lengthy written responses from both MP and minister.

    We did find reasonable insurance for the Rover, after getting quotes from Quinn (Irish company) for £1,400 but only if I took my NCD off my car and transferred it to sons car. My car is insured with Lloyds TSB they wanted an arm and leg and to cancel my
    policy and take out a new one. Didn't want that so I declined.
    We had quotes from £1,400 to £3,450 then the ridiculous Endsleigh quote.
    In the end we went with Admiral, with the car ownership in my sons's name, with him as the first driver and me on there too as a named driver. I've got over 20yrs of experience but found the cost came down again if my husband was added on as well.
    The policy is their latest one that gives you 1yr NCD after 10 months instead of 12 and cost £1,505 3rd Party F&T. Fully comp was over £2k

    So my advice to anyone is try all of the above in your quest to get cheaper insurance online, then phone the company and barter some more. We got Admiral down from £1,900 online to £1,505 by phone :T:T:T for Admiral :D

    Just for fun, I went through the quote with the address as my sisters (in the wilderness in Cornwall) and son's insurance went to £2,200. You'd think it would be the cheapest as car thieves would get lost finding it, but no, by keeping the car at my mums in the suburbs of a large town in Cornwall, the insurance came down to £1,330!!!

    I really do think insurers pick the figures out of the sky!!!
  • zatari
    zatari Posts: 12 Forumite
    Swift was very competitive :money:
    I'm 99% Luck

    :money:

    Yousef is my Name , Money is my Game
  • I find it amazing that Annie12 has to pay £4k for her son to be able to drive a few miles per week with a stack of other restrictions and Annie0103 is paying peanuts (£1505) by comparison with no apparent restrictions.

    What is going on?
    Mr Straw described whiplash as "not so much an injury, more a profitable invention of the human imagination—undiagnosable except by third-rate doctors in the pay of the claims management companies or personal injury lawyers"

  • MarkyMarkD
    MarkyMarkD Posts: 9,912 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    They live in different risk areas of the country, perhaps?
  • I am a mum of an 18 year old boy who is soon to take his driving test. With luck on his side I hope he passes so decided to look at insurance. Seen a 1.2 53 corsa so used that. Went on a well known compare site pretending he had just passed. £6052 was the cheapest!!! Changed him to a Miss and it came to £3221. All fair with the sexes NOT! Where am I going wrong?? I want him to drive lawfully I would even suck for the £3221 quote. Any ideas except a sex change :mad:
  • I'm an 18 year old who has recently passed his driving test, thankfully a family member was able to gift me with a Ford Focus (2000 reg) 1.6L petrol, but after two weeks of solid trying after passing my test I can't seem to get insurance at a reasonable price at all.

    Still yet to get below £4.5k on any price comparison sites, best quote so far has been around £3k. Unfortunately my parents and I have to split the cost and can't really go anywhere near those figures. We could just around stretch to £1800.

    I'm ideally looking for 3rd party, fire and theft cover in my name (as the car is registered in my name), and I've tried putting both of my parents on any policy quotes to see if there is ever any reduction. I'm in the postcode BT36, which is apparently a contributing factor but I find that a bit hard to believe as a friend of mine can get insured on a 1.4L Seat Ibiza for around £1500 in the same postcode. One quote we got was £1900 from Autoline, but when we called back the initial quote had been filled in with my marital status as "Married." Again, another quote of £3.5k came back.

    Apart from a cheap marriage ceremony are there any ways of reducing the cost?

    I've looked at potentially changing to maybe a 1.2L Corsa or something similar but for the price of changing the car it might just cost money we'd save in insurance to change.

    Thanks!
  • I've been trying to arrange insurance for my son to help us drive to Scotland at Easter: we approached the AA because my regular longtime insurers Zurich 'didnt do that sort of [young person] business' and the AA said that they would, particularly with regard to a short term (four weeks) extra named driver cover. So we went ahead with them. My son, who is now 20, is at university and doesn't need or have access to any car except ours. He passed his test in Feb. 2011, but hasn't needed to drive since.
    I phoned the AA yesterday and got some figures, and after discussing it with my wife, phoned them back today to set it up.
    In practice,unfortunately, it turns out it would mean changing companies from 'AA Merit' because they don't cover extras, and they would change us to another one they broker for general cover, Ageas. However it transpired that he would probably only be able to have one period of extra cover per year, but that's not important, however makes it difficult to justify the inflated initial premium for me as only driver, see below.

    Today the AA had trouble putting the work through ('computer says no') and they then discovered that the new company would only arrange a policy under those terms if it was 'new policy'. I complained vigorously, and postponed things: I later phoned back and asked for a supervisor and explained how angry we were about all these discrepancies and duff information, they said they would investigate and call back, which they did.

    They offered to accept us on this occasion (I had told them that technically I thought it WAS new business, either backdated to last November when I first joined the AA, or even by dint of the `refund' and thereby new insurance), and they have now come up with the following figures.

    Bearing in mind my original AA premium for me alone was £188, the new company will charge me a new annual premium of £361, the AA will give me a refund on what was left on the earlier policy with them of £88, making my new cost for me alone for the remainder of this year £273 ! and then they will charge us £85 for a four week period for my son.

    Any thoughts on this ?
  • greggreid wrote: »
    I'm an 18 year old who has recently passed his driving test, thankfully a family member was able to gift me with a Ford Focus (2000 reg) 1.6L petrol, but after two weeks of solid trying after passing my test I can't seem to get insurance at a reasonable price at all.

    Still yet to get below £4.5k on any price comparison sites, best quote so far has been around £3k. Unfortunately my parents and I have to split the cost and can't really go anywhere near those figures. We could just around stretch to £1800.

    I'm ideally looking for 3rd party, fire and theft cover in my name (as the car is registered in my name), and I've tried putting both of my parents on any policy quotes to see if there is ever any reduction. I'm in the postcode BT36, which is apparently a contributing factor but I find that a bit hard to believe as a friend of mine can get insured on a 1.4L Seat Ibiza for around £1500 in the same postcode. One quote we got was £1900 from Autoline, but when we called back the initial quote had been filled in with my marital status as "Married." Again, another quote of £3.5k came back.

    Apart from a cheap marriage ceremony are there any ways of reducing the cost?

    I've looked at potentially changing to maybe a 1.2L Corsa or something similar but for the price of changing the car it might just cost money we'd save in insurance to change.

    Thanks!

    Have you tried, Insure the Box, Ikube etc they all have restrictions I.e no driving from 11pm to 5am and you will need to let them install a telematics box which judges your frequency of driving (or as others on here will say its just gimmick for spying on you :D) these do come out to be cheap insurance if you willing to live with those restrictions.

    if not have you tried Admiral they do reasonable TPFT cover, or Quinn direct, Aviva but really they will probably be also around 2k to 2.5k mark.

    I know the price seems really steep but as you have just passed the price of insurance will be very steep. i passed in jan 2011 and my insurance for a focus 1.6 aswell :T was a outlandish £2800 :eek: but i made the commitment as i knew if i stuck with it even though i could not afford it ( meant i had to cut back alot of things in my life to pay for the insurance) it was worth it as i have just renewed and i am paying £1000 this year :j

    my advice is talk to some of the big boys and also follow MSE's guides and see what happens. good luck
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  • mildred1978
    mildred1978 Posts: 3,367 Forumite
    You will possibly find fully comp works out cheaper than TPF&T (which insurers don't really like).
    Science adjusts its views based on what's observed.
    Faith is the denial of observation, so that belief can be preserved.
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