Insurance Shambles

pitkin2020

closed wrote: »

it will probably go up when you pass

It sure will, it cost me an extra £35 for the year to add my partner whilst on provisional yet another £200 once she has passed.

rodenal

Your £2000 sounds about par for the course unfortunately - try what was suggested above and do a bit of thinking outside the box, I don't buy the 4x4s etc being cheaper for you but unloved (by young people) japanese / korean cars might be.

I insured my first car about 8 years ago, was a 306 dturbo which cost me £1500 at the time, so not a million miles off what you are talking about now. Infact if you escalate that by 3.5% a year it's roughly £2k - appreciate that's a bigger class of car than you are looking at but still.

Ignore the posts above giving you no end of abuse, I'm not quite sure where that's come from, as you've pointed out yourself you make no claims towards your supreme driving skills but pointed out you dont like spending where you dont have to. Fair enough, sb has obviously dealt with the "typical" young male alot in his career and has let that cloud all reasoned discussion, the point is valid you probably will have a bump but it's not the end of the world as long as you don't wipe yourself or anyone else out!

BlueFox

Young driver in 2011 = expensive premiums. Doesn't really matter what car you are looking at or how small the engine. The insurers don't know if you will be the young driver who ploughs into a queue of people at a bus stop causing multiple fatalities & costing them thousands if not millions, & like it or not they have to try to protect themselves from this potential risk.

Statistically young drivers cost insurers a lot more money in claims than any other category of driver. Gone are the days where at 17 you could buy a 1.0L mini & insure it TPFT for £400.

Whoever said it costs more to park your car in a garage than on a road is talking out of their jacksy A locked garage is the most secure place you can park a car & will reduce your premium, unless it's in a block of garages half a mile from your house.

Unfortunately the only hope you have is to buy a low insurance group car, drive like a nun for a couple of years so you can build up some ncb & you will start to see your premiums drop.

The worst thing you can do is "front" a policy by getting your parents to take out a policy in their name just to get cheaper insurance. All insurers have fraud investigators now & they will find out at some point & when they do your policy will be cancelled & all cover will be null & void. You would get a black mark against your name permanently & every insurer would know you had been refused insurance & if you think £2k is a lot now, just wait till you try to get cover then. If you are very lucky the insurance company wouldn't prosecute you for fraud, but if they do it's almost inevitable you will have a criminal record because fronting is impossible to defend.

Due to the amount of uninsured drivers on the roads premiums are a lot higher than they should be. The only way to reverse this is to eradicate uninsured drivers. Simple :wall:

scheming_gypsy

BlueFox wrote: »

Whoever said it costs more to park your car in a garage than on a road is talking out of their jacksy A locked garage is the most secure place you can park a car & will reduce your premium, unless it's in a block of garages half a mile from your house.

They weren't actually lying, although it's the most secure place to park a car, insurance isn't just paid out for theft. I've read it before somewhere else and there are quite a high number of garage related claims but more to do with being damaged in the garage... getting scratch and dented etc with the kids taking their bikes out and ladders / etc falling on them.

scheming_gypsy

rodenal wrote: »

I don't buy the 4x4s etc being cheaper for you but unloved (by young people) japanese / korean cars might be.

As i said in the original quote, i was speaking from my experience. I had a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a 4 litre engine and was paying under £400. I'm hoping to pick up a cheap Land rover as a second / winter car later in the year and that's coming back at under £300

BlueFox

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

They weren't actually lying, although it's the most secure place to park a car, insurance isn't just paid out for theft. I've read it before somewhere else and there are quite a high number of garage related claims but more to do with being damaged in the garage... getting scratch and dented etc with the kids taking their bikes out and ladders / etc falling on them.

Fair point.

However, most insurers WILL discount your premium if you park your car in a locked garage. Aside from the lower theft risk it also reduces the risk of cyclists getting too close & scratching it, ditto pushchairs, kids on skateboards or scooters. Also cars, delivery vans, lorries etc bumping into it, especially if your road isn't very wide.

Of course not all insurance companies adopt the same attitudes so some will offer discounts & some won't, just like some will regard a certain postcode as a higher risk than another insurer.

My advice would be to get quotes from every single insurance company you can, do thorough research & even speak to the most competitive ones & see if they can better their online quote. Some do.

Strider590

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

Why aren't they practical? Although a lot of youngsters drive hatchbacks because they automatically think that a small engined car will be cheaper on the insurance.

Exactly!!

But it's not just them, it's their parents too... They also assume smaller is cheaper.

Friend of mine, his first car was an old 2litre Volvo 240.... Cost less to insure than my other mates Peugeot 205 Diesel.

Lum

To be honest, the thought of a teenager in an old RWD Volvo with a live axle terrifies me

Still cheap to insure so we'll probably see more of them at this rate. Those things run forever, providing you don't like having heating

Strider590

Lum wrote: »

To be honest, the thought of a teenager in an old RWD Volvo with a live axle terrifies me

Tell me about it!

But the insurance companies don't think that way, they just place a premium on whatever gets crashed the most.

scheming_gypsy

Strider590 wrote: »

Exactly!!

But it's not just them, it's their parents too... They also assume smaller is cheaper.

Friend of mine, his first car was an old 2litre Volvo 240.... Cost less to insure than my other mates Peugeot 205 Diesel.

I'm 35 and i was insuring two cars for almost the same as my mum was insuring her 1.4 Citroen C3. It was costing her over £650 a year and it was costing me £2 a day to insure a 2 litre MR2 and a 2.5ltr Volvo 850SE Estate