Named Driver No Claims Discount Worthless with Direct Line

ewan.ashley

6 years ago my wife and I selected Direct Line to insure our car as they were offering 'Additional driver no claims discount', we wrongly assumed this is the same as the 'No claims discount' that other insurers recognise - They don't, and neither do Direct Line themselves! :mad:

We tried to insure an additional car and were told that we could only use our no claims on one car and therefore the additional car will be £900, with a total for two cars circa £1200, not forgetting we have paid Direct Line £300 p/a for the last 6 years with no claims.

With regard the 'Additional Driver No Claims Discount' we do feel we were missold and will be contacting the FSA. I do wonder how many others were duped into choosing Direct Line on this basis? The inference of the language used seems to be intentionally misleading.:cool:

Thank you to MoneySavingExpert.com :money: as I used this site to find a much better deal - Admiral honoured the Additional Driver No Claims Discount and insured us for circa £760!
A massive saving of £440 compared to Direct Line!

I have to say I was shocked at what Direct Line were going to charge and how worthless their Additional Driver No Claims Discount is.

As I said we will be contacting the FSA and would like to hear from you if you have had the same experience.

forgotmyname

Whose name is the current policy in and whose name did you put for the 2nd policy?
How many years no claims have you been a named driver.

Looks like they were taking something into account. I think it would be a lot dearer.

I think a good read of the smallprint maybe in order 1st.

chanz4

Its only a bonus with them, not other insurers

InsideInsurance

As usual these types of incentives are designed and given to create lock in to the brand. It is ultimately other insurance companies decision if they are willing to accept these incentives from other insurers or not.

I am confused however why you say you werent able to get the discount if staying within brand? Presumably you were putting the ND as the PH for the new policy? Or are you saying you were given the discount but the premiums were still higher than the competition? (in which case this is just commercial nature of insurance)

ShotsDad

Hi ashley.ewan
When my son reached 17 he was added as named driver and had no accidents or convictions for 1 year. On his 18th birthday we bought him a small sensible car (Peugeot 206) for him to drive to his new job. When we rang Direct Line we were quoted approximately £8,000(:mad:!!!) for Third Party Fire & Theft insurance as the price including No Claims Discount. We have since taken up a quote with Admiral for just under £1,800 and we have moved all our policies to Admiral. I rang Direct Line today in the hope of resolving my complaint and the first-line customer service person said "what this quote means is that we don't want to insure him".
My point is that it is unethical and dishonest to say give the impression that sons and daughters of policy-holders will be favoured when they clearly aren't. A NCD is meaningless when it is a discount off a price approx 5 times that of other companies. An ethical honest stance would be to have a marketing message that "we are not interested in younger drivers" as many firms do. I stayed with Direct Line for some years on the assumption that my sons would benefit and this wording is basically a lie.
I hope to get somewhere with the FSA but at the moment they have bigger fish to fry.
If this advert came under ASA jurisdiction it would be pulled with a public reprimand - I hope the FSA can be as strong on this. In the meantime tell anyone with teenage kids not to be taken in by this.

forgotmyname

Try the quote without the 1 years discount and it will be even higher.

Whats dishonest about offering no claims to named drivers? He was named and he got a quote with the discount.

Just the nature of insurance that they think he will be too much of a risk to get a sensible quote. He still got the discount they promised.

You would be moaning even more if they said sorry he wont earn a named driver discount because we assume he is a big risk.

They offer a discount he got the discount. But that doesnt mean its going to be cheaper.

They increased my premium one year, I got a better quote. They beat it. The following year the wouldnt budge so i moved on.

I dont see a case at all.

System

Look on the bright side, at least they quoted an extortionate amount rather than refusing to quote. The refusal would have really scuppered him.

adamc260

Their website says the following

Named drivers on your policy can earn their own Named Driver No Claim Discount for when they take out their own Direct Line policy

bouncydog1

!!!!!! wrote: »

Look on the bright side, at least they quoted an extortionate amount rather than refusing to quote. The refusal would have really scuppered him.

It would not have scuppered him at all. insurer not prepared to quote is not the same as a policy cancelled by the Insurer.


Insurers refuse to quote for all sorts of reasons e.g. 17 year old footballer applying to mainstream insurer for terms on a Bugatti Veyron wouldn't get a quote. They don't insure this car at all, or he is outside their market - e.g. Saga only want mature drivers.


He wouldn't have to declare this.

InsideInsurance

First of all you should have tried Comprehensive, this would probably have been cheaper than TPFT.

Secondly, all insurers have target markets and for these markets they will be relatively cheaper than others. If one company was simply cheaper for everyone there probably would only be one insurance company (until they went bust). It's certainly not "unfair" that a company doesnt want TPFT (which is traditionally much higher risk business than Comp) nor 18 year old males, especially with a 206 (or 106 or saxo etc).

All a Discount does is give a discount, it doesnt guarantee what the initial price will be that the discount is applied to

ShotsDad

My argument - the FSA can decide soon, is that it is misleading to say there will be a discount when it is off a wildly high premium that will say to named drivers "Now go away". The advert is not honest and would not pass the ASA but they don't regulate financial advertising. As for the 206 - this is the smallest car we could buy for him as he is 2.15m = 7ft!! That's another story.

Why should Fully Comp be cheaper as with FC you can claim for your own car to be fixed?? The whole business is not very transparent.

We found that the quote went down with me as a named driver on the Peugeot 206 even though (1) I am insured to drive it with permission anyway (2) I only drive it v occasionally.