Direct Line / Admiral car insurance

Supernova

Been quoted £563 from Direct Line for a 2003 Seat Leon S including legal cover, protected NCB and hire car for 14 days. That will increase by about 10% as I have 3 points pending for speeding too. I'm 47.

Best quote from confused including the pending points is £407 from Admiral, so £200 cheaper.

Worth it?

I don't think I get the hire car for loss or w/o - it came in useful when shopping for a new car after my car was written off 4 years ago and Direct Line were pretty OK to deal with then.

Ta

magyar

How often are you going to have a write off / theft? Let's say once every five years (which seems very high, but hey). So that's £1000 saved going with Admiral - which will more than cover a hire car for two weeks. I'd go with Admiral in this instance.

My golden rule for insurance... if you can afford to pay for the consequences, you don't need the insurance.

[All things being equal, i.e. provided you're happy that Admiral provide the things do do need]

impy78

It depends whether you want service or a good price.

You've had a positive experience with an insurance company, which let's face it, is becoming a rarity these days.

Admiral may be just as good, but you have had actual experience with Direct Line.

magyar

impy78 wrote:

It depends whether you want service or a good price.

You've had a positive experience with an insurance company, which let's face it, is becoming a rarity these days.

Admiral may be just as good, but you have had actual experience with Direct Line.

Tell you what, give me half of the £1000 saved by going with Admiral and I'll personally clean your shoes for a month! How's that for service!

impy78

How is it saving £1000 going with admiral?


It's £563 with direct line, plus 10% which is just over £600.


The direct line one is Admiral one is £407 - that's £200, not £1000 difference, surely?

You can't say that his insurance won't go up with admiral next year, what if he gets another sp30, or has another accident, or his car is stolen, or seat leons just become very expensive to insure?

magyar

impy78 wrote:

How is it saving £1000 going with admiral?
It's £563 with direct line, plus 10% which is just over £600.
The direct line one is Admiral one is £407 - that's £200, not £1000 difference, surely?

I quoted £1000 over five years (£200x5) as being the likely frequency of thefts/writeoffs (and I'm being excessive there - I've been driving over twenty years and have only had one theft). It doesn't mean he should stay for five years, merely that that's the best way to analyse the true value of having a hire car on the policy.

impy78 wrote:

You can't say that his insurance won't go up with admiral next year, what if he gets another sp30, or has another accident, or his car is stolen, or seat leons just become very expensive to insure?

No, and if it does go up I would heartily recommend moving again.

If he gets another speeding ticket, has an accident, car stolen or Leons become more expensive (hope not, I've got one too!) then any insurance will go up, not just Admiral's.

Astaroth

But by an unknown amount. Whilst you may have had 1 theft in 20 years I had 5 thefts in 1 year (know exactly who was doing it too but of cause no proof) so whilst the average is low the standard deviation can be very high.

Having a "history" with a company can also be very good when trying to argue a point.

The other thing to do is to get a new web quote from DL. Most insurers heavily discount first year insurance and then creep the price back up to the "real" rate but there is nothing stopping you getting another new business quote from DL and if it is cheaper speaking to their retainer teams to either get them to match their own price or cancel the policy and you just buy the new one on the web.

Supernova

Thanks guys.

Confused.com said DL refused to quote, I'll try it direct but perhaps they'll recognise me as an existing customer anyway. I'll go back to them by phone if not.

Thinking about it though, all my experiences with insurance companies have been pretty positive. Touch wood etc.

magyar

Astaroth wrote:

But by an unknown amount. Whilst you may have had 1 theft in 20 years I had 5 thefts in 1 year (know exactly who was doing it too but of cause no proof) so whilst the average is low the standard deviation can be very high.

Of course you can get horror stories (and my father has had a very similar experience to yourself; he strongly believes it's a neighbour's son who is stealing cars in the area but, again, has no proof), but I was simply going on the OP's statistic, which I would have said is probably a fair mean.

Yes, if you have a very bad time, then you're hit, but that's always the rub with insurance. As I say, if you can afford the hit on something then you shouldn't insure against it.

Astaroth wrote:

Having a "history" with a company can also be very good when trying to argue a point.

The other thing to do is to get a new web quote from DL. Most insurers heavily discount first year insurance and then creep the price back up to the "real" rate but there is nothing stopping you getting another new business quote from DL and if it is cheaper speaking to their retainer teams to either get them to match their own price or cancel the policy and you just buy the new one on the web.

I have to say, I'd assumed the OP had already asked DL to provide their best quote against a competitor (you should always do that). If not, then I completely agree with you, Astaroth.

Astaroth

Supernova wrote:

Confused.com said DL refused to quote, I'll try it direct but perhaps they'll recognise me as an existing customer anyway. I'll go back to them by phone if not.

Direct Line does not authorise Confused.com to crawl their website and then charge them £50 for each policy that is sold. Confused used to crawl them and give them sales without authorisation and obviously receiving no commission but this was stopped after it was pointed out that this activity was potentially illegal.

Last time I heard there is ongoing legal battles between DL and Confused over confused using their trademarks without authorisation but the press has never carried what the outcome of this was or if it is still ongoing.

magyar

Supernova wrote:

Thinking about it though, all my experiences with insurance companies have been pretty positive. Touch wood etc.

Generally agree with you as well. I had a bit of a pain with DL once when my car was stolen, but then found two days later neatly parked somewhere, locked up and the radio stolen.

They sent me a letter saying "please confirm why the car was found in this state", which I found quite hard to answer, as I'm not really that au fait with the criminal mind.

Even then, one letter to them and it was sorted. I was a little naive at the time and didn't realise that making a claim for a £100 radio was not a good idea...