Gap insurance and supagard. Have I been ripped off??

thabai

Hi. Sorry if this has been spoken about before but I've read a few things and still have questions.
Ok so yeah I got talked into the gap insurance and supagard stuff when I went to but my new car.
I refused to pay the £399 they wanted for the gap so they ended up giving me £150 off and included the supagard inside and out for free.
Is £250 good for a return to invoice gap insurance (3 year) and the supagard (3 year).
I've seen a lot of bad reviews for the supagard but I'm not sure if this is just because people expect to not have to ever clean their cars? Also I've seen quite a bit about the warranty being useless? I'm picking the car up tomorrow so is there anything I should look out for? and what information/paperwork should I be expecting the dealer to give me for each thing?

NeverEnough

Although Gap Insurance is generally cheaper from a third party supplier, not the selling dealer, the insurance itself is certainly worth having - depends on the level of finance, but if your car is written off and you owe say £8000 on it but the insurer pays out £5000 as the market value, you would have to find the extra £3K and the gap insurance insures that "gap" between what insurers pay and what the finance owing is - you can then at least get a new car without losing ££££ - thats worth the £250. It all depends on the value of the car if it is written off - stolen and not recovered etc. The supagard is high priced and makes lots of ££££ for the dealer - you can buy the same product yourself for a tenner and apply it yourself, but as you are not "buying" it per se and its just included in the sale, I wouldn't stress too much about its relative worth.

forgotmyname

If you never need to claim and it doesnt apply to your circumstances then you were ripped off.

If there is a chance that you may make a claim then its not being ripped off.

Its upto you to decide if you want to risk not having it. Or if its worth the money your paying for it.

chanz4

superguard is quite good, they used to use diamondbrite, it stops scratches as much. If you have kids the inside spray they use bounces liquid. Its not a bad deal for both, but superguard is way over priced compared to the cost of it.

BJV

When you buy gap insurance directly from your dealership they are legally bound to charge you insurance premium tax ( almost like VAT on insurance) at 20 %

When you buy from third party it is 6 %.

I just Googled Gap insurance and you can get a form of return to invoice for less than £70.00.

I used to work for a big big German manufacturer and know a little about gap insurance. In most cases the only difference is how much IPT you are paying.

The which report is worth a read http://www.which.co.uk/money/insurance/guides/gap-insurance/

Gap 123 where about the cheapest gap insurance provider according to the which reviews but there where lots of others mentioned.

Also don't forget also that nothing is for free. Somewhere you are paying for it. So when they say that they are giving you the superguard for free they are not you are paying for it. That said if it is applied correctly it can make a big difference.

thabai

Where would they be charging me for it?
I've got the total infront of me and I'm paying cash so it can't be an extra on finance

forgotmyname

thabai wrote: »

Where would they be charging me for it?
I've got the total infront of me and I'm paying cash so it can't be an extra on finance

They are charging you £250 GAP where you can get it for £70 as above.

So its costing you £180 to superguard it.

BJV

forgotmyname wrote: »

They are charging you £250 GAP where you can get it for £70 as above.

So its costing you £180 to superguard it.

Spot on!

Everything has a price. A pen a piece of paper has to be paid for and accounted for somewhere. Gap insurance is also not vat-able so they will have to split the amount out. It is a legal requirement that they show the cost inclusive of IPT not VAT so they can not get around this.( to make sure again that the government gets the right amount of tax and that they do not pay too much or too little )

They will have to pay for the superguard products so again this will have to be split out so that the right departments get the money to pay for the kit.

What they are doing is saying that for example the car is £10,000 which includes gap and superguard.

You think that it is free but it is not.

What they are really doing is charging you for example

£9500 for the car
£250 for the gap insurance
£250 for the superguard

The cost to you remains the same so you think that it is free.

A very old trick is to take the dealerships gap insurance so that you get the discounted price on the car then cancel the gap get a full refund and buy else where.

This is however the chickens way. it would be much better to be upfront about it and just get them to discount the car up front.

Hope this makes sense!

thabai

Hi. Thanks for replies!
I've had a few issues with the dealer who sold me the car.
I haven't been given any information on the supaguard so I'm guessing they haven't even bothered doing it...
I didn't realise I could get gap from anywhere but dealer as when I got the car they said I had to take it out then and there or I couldn't get it.
Only realised this was utter nonsense when I got home. I've got the car sales guy phoning me back today. If he doesn't bother sorting out my problems or even replying like the past two times I've called I'm going to cancel the policy

thabai

Ok so the car dealership won't get back in touch with me so I've decided to cancel the gap insurance.
I've just looked on that 123gap and it's given me a quote of £68 for 3 years!!