Car Insurance - please help with a total mess!

dacouch

Did the Micras Insurers ask how many cars there are in the household and / or how many vehicles your husband has access to and if so did you declare the three vehicles?

vikinggreen

Yes, it was an online application and I declared all 3 cars.

Thank you, dacouch.

dacouch

It's not an exact science, in most cases such as yours eg third car in the family and just purchased as the son obtains his licence (It will ring lots of alarm bells when / if your son has a claim). It can be easy for the Insurer as the son is driving it to work / college every day or there is evidence it's the sons car eg purchase receipt in sons name (They often check) or the log book is or was in the son's name etc.

It's fairly obvious the car has been bought for the son when he passes his test.

As I mentioned before your husband putting say 300 miles on it over two days while your son uses it for three days doing say 50 miles with the rest of the time it not being used. Would often mean your son is the main user.

You need to be very on the ball with it, as when / if there is a claim with your son driving / in charge (Young male drivers have a lot of claims) the Insurers will be all over it.

It sounds like you don't actually have a spare no claims bonus to use on it, the Insurers will be requesting it soon. Mikey gives you some good advice on what to do on the no claims bonus, you need to act soon on the no claims as if you don't supply it to them they may cancel or raise a very large extra premium for you to pay eg circa 150%.

vikinggreen

dacouch, thank you, and you are right in one sense, that the Micra was bought because our son was learning to drive.

HOWEVER ... before everyone jumps in and accuses us of fraud, we couldn't insure either of the other cars for him. Had we been able to we would of course have done so. The BMW's predecessor was a Ford Focus and if we had still had that we would have simply forked out the cash and had done with it. I looked into insuring both cars for him, but the BMW was obviously a complete non-starter and the Galaxy would have been the same once he qualified, not to mention that the idea of a teenager driving a 7 seater car makes my blood run cold.

We considered selling the Galaxy (which is probably worth nothing anyway) and simply replacing it with a smaller car, but I run a Scout Group and it is just invaluable for transporting kit to camps and events. As such, the Galaxy is now the "third car". It is older than the Micra and it guzzles petrol (the BMW is a diesel, and far more economic) so we will drive it only enough to keep it roadworthy. The Micra is a far more economic car for local driving and I have been using it for all my local journeys since we bought it.

As you say, I need to get a move on with providing proof of the NCD to the Micra insurers, so that is today's wrangle.

Debt_Free_Chick

vikinggreen wrote: »

How does an insurer decide on the "main user" of a car?

Good question, I think.

Hubby drove the car from Land's End on a Monday, to John O'Groats arriving Tuesday - effectively, one trip. Returns Wednesday/Thursday - two trips.

Wife could use the Galaxy and make four, five or more trips in those fours days, so arguably the main driver as she made more trips and also had sole use of the car for four days.

Would be interesting to understand the meaning of main driver ...

mikey72

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

Good question, I think.

Hubby drove the car from Land's End on a Monday, to John O'Groats arriving Tuesday - effectively, one trip. Returns Wednesday/Thursday - two trips.

Wife could use the Galaxy and make four, five or more trips in those fours days, so arguably the main driver as she made more trips and also had sole use of the car for four days.

Would be interesting to understand the meaning of main driver ...

I think the insurer would look at the main user as whoever would be getting first choice on it. In this example, if the Micra is used for short local journeys, and both the son and the father wanted to make a journey at the same time, if the son had use of the Micra, but the father took the BMW, I would guess that would make the son look the main user. Same with the Galaxy and the BMW, if the mother and the father both had to make a trip at the same time, who would take the Galaxy?

System

mikey72 wrote: »

the main user as whoever would be getting first choice on it.

You mean someone who reserved the right to exercise first choice of use of a car would by definition be the main driver, even if when asked if he wanted to exercise that choice each day, let his 17 year old son drive it to college?

Whatever it means, "main driver" has to mean someone who actually drives it, not just has the right to drive it.

The mileage versus number of occasions argument is the real one. If one person uses the car one day a week to drive 1000 miles, but someone else uses it 6 days a week to go 5 miles, who is the main driver?