Another car insurance hike by "stealth" - the inclusion of compulsory excess?

ic

With my insurance due for renewal next month I thought I'd run up some quotes to see what damage I could expect. As I'd anticipated the cost has jumped a further £80 from last year to approx £700 - but what I did spot was that the majority of insurers are now applying a compulsory excess. The last time I had a compulsory excess was when I was 25, I'm now 30. My situation hasn't changed, no accidents, 9 years NCB, same car - so I'm guessing in addition to hiking up the costs, the insurers are also stealthily adding the compulsory excess which I'm sure most people don't look for.

I'll be inspecting my renewal notice closely to see if its been added there too! Of course this also effectively makes the results of the comparison sites useless, as they're not comparing policies like-for-like. A change in the voluntary excess to compensate with any insurer can alter the price by as much as £100. Does anybody know of a comparison site that allows you to compare on the total excess, rather than just enter a voluntary?

For the record the compulsory excesses displayed on my results were as follows from Tesco Compare (I ran a couple up direct and the excess matched):

£0: Tesco, Privilege, Churchill
£100: Auto Direct, ESI, Swinton, Motor Quote Direct, Direct Choice, Motor Insurance Warehouse, igo4, Kwikfit, Devitt, Quotea, Thames City, First Insurance, Its4Me, AutoNet
£150: Hastings Direct, Insure, Renew
£200: Broker King, More Than, Express Insurance, Co-operative
£225: Endsleigh
£250: Quinn
£300: Budget, HSBC, iBuyEco, Yes, Barclays, RAC, Post Office, AA, Performance Direct
£350: M&S
£450: Santander
Won't say in the comparison listing: Admiral, Insure Your Motor, The Policy Shop, Sureterm, One Call

Are others finding the same, or are insurers now applying different compulsory excesses for different people?

dacouch

Insurers have been doing this for a long time, to get business they have to offer one of the cheapest premiums so a lot of them either trim cover and / or include compulsory excesses.

Well done for reading the quotes properly, it's amazing how many people just look at the price and chose the cheapest company

ic

Hmmm, I suspect there must be a drift to increasing these then - I've always looked for a total excess of £200, and all my policies so far have been £200 through voluntary excess. My choice is severely limited now, I'd never noticed how many had a compulsory excess before - only three don't!