Should you be getting money back when downgrading a policy ?

jaybeetoo

Be careful, they may charge you an administration fee to change the policy which is more than any refund would be!

dacouch

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Mass market insurance works by statistics not logic

In theory you have a couple of million customers for a fair number of years which represent a wide spectrum of people, vehicles, geographies etc. You can then cut the data along each of the rating factors and see how moving just one element impacts the claims experience.

In a perfect world this would work perfectly and you could isolate each variable. Reality is that there isnt an even distribution so if you look at the claims experience of everyone that ownes a Saxo VTS because its so heavily skewed to young drivers the results are always worse.

TPFT has the same issue, its sub prime space and so poor claims experience and high premiums

Also affected by underwriters remembering it was the cover of choice for fraud by theft or fire back in the day. Along with people who have a fault accident with no other parties and realise thy have no cover for their own damage so their car mysteriously gets stolen shortly after

InsideInsurance

Plus there is less competition in the market given a couple of big players stopped writing TPO/ TPFT business which inevitably means the remaining companies can push up rates

Mr_Mink

Could you not cancel the policy all together (which I'm sure would entitle you to a refund) and then take up a new one?

Also, if it's off the road for a few months, you may as well declare it SORN and cancel the insurance, no sense in taxing and insuring a car that isn't going to be going anywhere unless you suspect it could be prone to vandalism.

Aretnap

Mr_Mink wrote: »

Could you not cancel the policy all together (which I'm sure would entitle you to a refund) and then take up a new one?

Yes, but there'd be a cancellation fee which would be deducted from the amount he gets refunded. He also won't get any no claims bonus for the year if he cancels part way through - though two and a half months into a policy that's not too big an issue, and not an issue at all if he already has full (ie 5 years) no claims.

Mr_Mink wrote: »

Also, if it's off the road for a few months, you may as well declare it SORN and cancel the insurance, no sense in taxing and insuring a car that isn't going to be going anywhere unless you suspect it could be prone to vandalism.

He can look at laid up insurance if it's not going to be kept on the road but he still wants cover against fire, theft, vandalism etc - it's considerably cheaper than normal car insurance as it doesn't have cover anything to do with road accidents. It doesn't count as insurance for the purposes of the Road Traffic Act so the car still has to be kept off-road and SORNed.

grayme-m

jaybeetoo wrote: »

Be careful, they may charge you an administration fee to change the policy which is more than any refund would be!

When we went from two to one car, they tried this one with me.

I rang to cancel (I wasn't expecting any refund) and they claimed I owed them as the refund was less than the £50 admin fee.

It took a little while and some silence as they discussed with their supervisor before agreeing they could just cancel the policy.

I'm not sure of the legalities, but I did suggest if they insisted on charging me, they could just leave the policy to run out and I wouldn't claim, I think that was when he finally realised how daft they were being.

Aretnap

grayme-m wrote: »

I'm not sure of the legalities, but I did suggest if they insisted on charging me, they could just leave the policy to run out and I wouldn't claim...

Always an option but not without risks. If you sell the car and the new owner doesn't insure it and causes an accident, your insurer will be left with a liability under the Road Traffic Act to compensate injured third parties. There's then a danger that they'll come after you to recover the money they had to pay out. So it's always safest to cancel the policy on a car you're selling, even if you have to argue over the cancellation fee.