is insurance voidable if you temporarily remove some trim from the exterior?

londonTiger

Just lookin to paint the black bumper trim to match the car body paint. Phoned insurance and they told me it's just £35 extra to the remium as a declared mod.

Was wondering if I drive the car without the trim now would it void the insurance if I end up in an accident or something?

Insure with admiral. Been unable to get through to them.

CKhalvashi

£35 seems a little steep, and may be seen as admin charge instead of extra risk!

What model car is it, and which piece of trim is it? It may not be worth it in this instance. It may well be voidable (the reason I ask the previous question is to work on common sense), but my general attitude is to tell the insurer if there's anything done that isn't standard.

Signwriting mine and ordering black windows on the back actually brought the premium down by (IIRC) about £400.

CK

londonTiger

yes, I am definately going to declare it once the mod is done. What I'm asking is if I remove the trim to work on it. Is that VOIDABLE?

londonTiger

it's a mk4 golf

my car below, the black trim does make the car look very ugly and colour coding all the bumper trim does tidy up the look of the car quite substantially, I don't think the £35 is a huge cost - actually very reasonable IMO:



this is a colour coded model:

londonTiger

ok just called them and got the changes, recorded the call, got the name of the advisor.

They jsut said "yeah ok, you're covered". I'm not sure if the advisor understood - every time I call about mods, they never seemed to understand fully what I'm talking about. But I recorded the call and will keep it in case they try something.

CKhalvashi

Common sense would state it's no higher risk, but you need to check with the insurers.

As they seem to think you are, it's just down to whether you feel that £35 is a reasonable price to pay for this.

CK

Gloomendoom

When you renew, it will probably only cost you a lot less. If I remember correctly, when I declared two mods on my car at renewal time it only added £14 to the premium. That was with Admiral.

rdwarr

CKhalvashi wrote: »

Common sense would state it's no higher risk, but you need to check with the insurers.

Anything that makes the car more desirable (and therefore more likely to be stolen) can increase the risk. As we're all agreed that this mod makes the car nicer then it's important to check, especially with bargain basement insurers like Admiral.

redux

rdwarr wrote: »

Anything that makes the car more desirable (and therefore more likely to be stolen) can increase the risk. As we're all agreed that this mod makes the car nicer then it's important to check, especially with bargain basement insurers like Admiral.

And more expensive to repair.

vikingaero

Even though London Tiger has paid £35 to cover the modification and not void the insurance, scummy Admiral can apply the Standard Parts Replacement Clause that they use. That is if the front bumper is smashed in an accident then they can only pay out for a normal bumper with black trim even though you paid an additional premium!

londonTiger

vikingaero wrote: »

Even though London Tiger has paid £35 to cover the modification and not void the insurance, scummy Admiral can apply the Standard Parts Replacement Clause that they use. That is if the front bumper is smashed in an accident then they can only pay out for a normal bumper with black trim even though you paid an additional premium!

yes, im not intending to stay with admiral next year. I will jump to a modified insurer. They'll be a lot more reasonable - just need the noclaims with them for another year. companies like adrian flux, greenlight, sky, brentacre are good for modified cars (because they understand that modified car drivers tend to look after their vehicles and drive more carefully). But to get a worthwhile quote from them you need to have some noclaims.

I had 1 year noclaims but had a nonfault accident which the modified insurers didn't want to deal with. Hopefuly a 2 year noclaims will change their mind next year.