What are your London (zone 2-3) premiums like?

londonTiger

I often hear on this website that some people are paying £250-£400 a year for insurance. Honestly - I would be over the moon if I was paying so little.

The lowest I had was £1200 annual. Admittedly I don't have a clean record, I have a at fault accident 2.5 years ago (in a hire car which I should not have disclosed) and a non fault accident 8 months ago when a parked car pulled straight in front of me without indicating as I was driving along.

I have run same fake quotes and without the accidents the lowest premium I would have is £900 - still quite expensive.

I thought perhaps it was my 1.6 golf (common young persons car). So I did some quotes for a volvo and an audi estate - they were still simialr to the golf as far as premiums are concerned.

audi avant 1.8T (53 reg): ~£1200
volvo v70 2.4L: ~£1055

(these estates may be substannially more powerful than my golf 1.6 105ps car).

Question: Anyone else live in zones 2-3 in LOndon? What are your premiums for modest cars?

forgotmyname

Estates are generally more expensive that saloons and hatchbacks.

More important than zones. Your postcode..

londonTiger

ok i'll retry with a saloon. i thought estates would be profiled as a sensible/family/dad car compared to my hatchback which is more of a young drivers car.

the area i live in used to be regarded as a high vehicle crime area (police signs where plastered everywhere saying so) - but now it's OK for low end cars. The odd break ins do occur in taxis but nothing out of the ordinary.

forgotmyname

Estate = a van with windows. More likely to get asked to pick stuff up or drop things off at the tip etc.

Diesel also is sometimes dearer than the sporty petrol model.

Going back a few years now i was looking at a 2L diesel Rover Montego.

It would have been cheaper to insure a 150bhp 2L turbo petrol one instead.
I settled on the 2L petrol one.

I dont do a billion miles a year so MPG doesnt matter too much. Bigger cars tend to be cheaper to buy.

Why buy a little fiesta or a focus when for less money you can have the Mondeo.

Running costs are not a mile apart. 50 - 60+ MPG in a 1.5 ton estate car shocked me.
Getting 36 - 39 mpg when towing a caravan is also a miracle.

Compared to the Range Rover i was getting 12 - 14mpg.

Ultrasonic

How old are you? My guess is that the people with significantly lower premiums are older, and lack fault claims.

Yolina

I'm on the Isle of Dogs and my insurance for the Yaris Hybrid (ins. group 8 I think) is £500, secure car park and have the maximum no claim - had a non-fault claim about 7 years ago. Slightly cheaper than for the 206 xsi (ins. group 16) I had before, but not that much (about £50).

Edit: that's with LV, which aren't necessarily the cheapest but I can usually barter them down a bit at renewal time. That's for fully comp with business use. Last renewal I had a couple of really low quotes (£350ish) with pretty much all the other companies coming in at between £450 to £550 but I'm not sure how much hassle those insurers which quoted such a low price might be in the event of a claim.

londonTiger

I've tried rover 75 and vw passat as the test saloon cars. Quotes were still more or less the same. (around 1200).

Did a test with a newer model of Golf which gave me the 852 figure - all previous cars were valued around £1500.

So I reckon that insurance is more expensive the cheaper the car is valued at.

GAZ237

londonTiger wrote: »

I often hear on this website that some people are paying £250-£400 a year for insurance. Honestly - I would be over the moon if I was paying so little.

The lowest I had was £1200 annual. Admittedly I don't have a clean record, I have a at fault accident 2.5 years ago (in a hire car which I should not have disclosed) and a non fault accident 8 months ago when a parked car pulled straight in front of me without indicating as I was driving along.

I have run same fake quotes and without the accidents the lowest premium I would have is £900 - still quite expensive.

I thought perhaps it was my 1.6 golf (common young persons car). So I did some quotes for a volvo and an audi estate - they were still simialr to the golf as far as premiums are concerned.

audi avant 1.8T (53 reg): ~£1200
volvo v70 2.4L: ~£1055

(these estates may be substannially more powerful than my golf 1.6 105ps car).

Question: Anyone else live in zones 2-3 in LOndon? What are your premiums for modest cars?

Why should you not of disclosed the accident?.

Would be a simple case of fraud. Obtaining insurance by deception.

If you had to make a claim the insurance would be null and void.( except for 3rd party liabilities ) Which the insurance company could claim back from you.

londonTiger

GAZ237 wrote: »

Why should you not of disclosed the accident?.

Would be a simple case of fraud. Obtaining insurance by deception.

If you had to make a claim the insurance would be null and void.( except for 3rd party liabilities ) Which the insurance company could claim back from you.

On the online application it asks to state the nature of the accident and total payout. I phoned up the hire company to ask how much the total claim cost was and the insurance rep from the hire company was a bit confused as to why i was chasing them up over this, I explained my situation and the rep told me I do not need to declare this accident because it's claimed from their (hire company) insurance i.e. hire company made the claim and not me.

But I wanted to make sure everything was above board so I declared it anyway.

Looking back now I don't think this claim or accident would be under my personal record. So if I hadn't mentioend it - it would have never been found out. Though now that I have mentioned it to my insurance I guess they will have that added to my record.

Oh well, live and learn.. I guess I have to wait another 2 years to get this wiped off.

ElkyElky

londonTiger wrote: »

On the online application it asks to state the nature of the accident and total payout. I phoned up the hire company to ask how much the total claim cost was and the insurance rep from the hire company was a bit confused as to why i was chasing them up over this, I explained my situation and the rep told me I do not need to declare this accident because it's claimed from their (hire company) insurance i.e. hire company made the claim and not me.

But I wanted to make sure everything was above board so I declared it anyway.

Looking back now I don't think this claim or accident would be under my personal record. So if I hadn't mentioend it - it would have never been found out. Though now that I have mentioned it to my insurance I guess they will have that added to my record.

Oh well, live and learn.. I guess I have to wait another 2 years to get this wiped off.

You have to declare any accident/claim that you've been involved in, wether it be a hire car or a mates car using one of those temporary x day policies. They will want to know regardless of the circumstances (in regards to how you were insured etc) as it'll increase the risk for them.

Admiral don't require you to declare any claims that are older than 3 years so that'll certainly help lower premiums. I've just insured two of my cars, on separate policies (multi car was more expensive) with Admiral and my non-fault claim had just turned 3 years 2 months old so I didn't declare and my premiums are now considerably cheaper than they were last year.

londonTiger

That's good to kknow because Ithought admiral ask for 5 year driving history