Crazy Compulsory Excess

edphill

Just doing the annual insurance renewal for both of my cars, and at the ripe age of 23, it is rarely a pleasant experience.

Churchill seems to have come up trumps following Martin's advice using a mixture of comparison sites.

However, entering the same details gives slightly different results and, to me, seems to be due to the compulsory excess applied.

Confused.com returns the lowest price at £308.99 with a voluntary excess of £150 but with a whopping compulsory excess of £600. That's a total excess of £750!!

Compare the market - for the same cover returns £321.18 with a somewhat more acceptable compulsory excess of £350, so total excess £500.

The annoying thing is that I cannot amend this compulsory excess and yet different sites return different compulsory excesses with the same input details.

Just a warning to everyone to carefully consider the compulsory excess and not take it for granted that it will be the same across the board.

CKhalvashi

edphill wrote: »

Just doing the annual insurance renewal for both of my cars, and at the ripe age of 23, it is rarely a pleasant experience.

Churchill seems to have come up trumps following Martin's advice using a mixture of comparison sites.

However, entering the same details gives slightly different results and, to me, seems to be due to the compulsory excess applied.

Confused.com returns the lowest price at £308.99 with a voluntary excess of £150 but with a whopping compulsory excess of £600. That's a total excess of £750!!

Compare the market - for the same cover returns £321.18 with a somewhat more acceptable compulsory excess of £350, so total excess £500.

The annoying thing is that I cannot amend this compulsory excess and yet different sites return different compulsory excesses with the same input details.

Just a warning to everyone to carefully consider the compulsory excess and not take it for granted that it will be the same across the board.

I've got a £1,000 excess (£100 + £900) on both of our cars, as we're not planning to smash them up.

£750 excess isn't drastically bad, compared to some quotes I've seen for drivers around your age.

CK

ETA: Speak to Adrian Flux, as they always have been one of the cheapest for us.

SuperHan

I'm 22 and have a £400 excess on my insurance policy - £250 voluntary and £150 compulsory. And that's as a young driver, I think this drops when I'm 25. But I think it's quite reasonable!

YoungBusinessman

At 21 i have £500 compulsary and £1000 voluntary. Not planning on smashing them up and the money saved by having it at that means over 3 years i actually would even save money if i had a smash.

Archergirl

I've got a £1,000 excess (£100 + £900) on both of our cars, as we're not planning to smash them up.

Bit of a daft statement really, nobody plans to have an accident, I think that's why they are called accidents............

mikey72

I had an excess of £1000 on one of ours.
It was worth £450, and I didn't care if I smashed it up.
And increasing the excess from £350 to £1000 reduced my premium by £50. So my payout reduced from £100 to £0 if I claimed, and saved me £50 if I didn't.

I must admit I don't really get hung up on the excess though, I view the insurance as a legal requirement, I run the cars into the ground, so replacing them earlier if they are written off isn't a great issue, and minor damage I can duct tape back on.

edphill

Interesting to hear your points.

I suppose it comes down to personal preference.

For me, going through all the comparison sites and playing with the sliders to adjust my voluntary excess between £0 and £500 to see the difference in overall premium seemed a futile exercise when the compulsory excess was £600 anyway.

Of course I don't plan to have a car crash, as some of you seem to think. I am very fortunate and have a relatively new, nice car, that I would like to insure properly. However, accidents do happen and fixing my car could cost £7,000 or £8,000 before they decided to write it off, so I wouldn't want to be paying a large excess if anything did happen. It could be as simple as someone scraping down the side in a car park and driving away, or driving into it whilst parked and I would be hit for the excess.

If I had a banger worth a few hundred quid, I would probably make the excess as high as possible as well to bring the premium down. Unfortunately (fortunately?), I'm not in that position.

I could effectively self-insure with the premium excess as YoungBusinessman suggested by increasing my premium and keeping the cash I save on the premium aside incase I ever to have an accident and have to pay the premium. This is risky though as if you do have an accident within the first few years (up to break-even point) you will lose.

Shall we adjust the old saying "there are three things you can be certain of in life; Death, Taxes, and high compulsory excesses as a young driver"?

Although, if I was willing to pay an extra £100 for my premium, I could bring my total premium down to £95 with Hastings. I didn't go for this on the assumption that if I had car damage that I had to pay for costing less than £500, I would probably foot the bill to avoid my premium increasing for the next few years because of a little accident!

whitelabel

i actually found it was a cheaper or the same price to have a £350 excess and as £150 so dont always assume having higher will reduce policies