Can insurance frustration with NCB

ilovelondontown

Short and sweet I haven't driven in a few years so my NCB has gone. I'm back in the drivers seat and have had a full clean licence for 11 years, but looking for any insurance is bring back such wide ranging and all high quotes I'm at the end of my rope. The best quote I could find was £470 from Pink Pound, then after that it jumps to around £570 and then in to £600+ . The cars only worth around £2.5K, feel like I'm insuring my first car again with these prices!

My question is basically this, for a run around car should I still go for a more reputable insurance company or get the cheapest, but possibly worse to deal with til I start building up my NCB again?

It's been 3 years since I was last in the drivers seat so I feel a bit rusty on how to get the best quotes etc. Any advice?

laineybird2000

It does get pricy if you take a break from car insurance. Better to leave it running. That said, your quote doesn't sound so bad. I've been driving 17 years, full clean licence one non fault accident. I'm paying 280 a year. Insurance is just expensive. Lile gas an electricity. I remember when I paid 9 quid a week for both (gives sigh whilst woefully shaking my head)

you tried elephant.com?

ilovelondontown

Thanks Ianeybird, I had a look at the details from what I submitted I actually increased the mileage for use and it came down to £530 with a well known insurer.

Just a bullet I have to bite I think. I so wish elec and gas still cost £9 a week

specialboy

Try playing with your details, parking on the road rather than the drive and raising your excess can save a few quid as can adding a partner or parent who has a decent driving record, also full comp is often cheaper than tpf&t.

Hintza

If you go via Quidco (or similar) you should be able to get £50+ cashback which will help. Perhaps even try going through a broker.

Ultrasonic

specialboy wrote: »

Try playing with your details, parking on the road rather than the drive and raising your excess can save a few quid as can adding a partner or parent who has a decent driving record, also full comp is often cheaper than tpf&t.

Surely parking on the road would increase premiums?

I've always gone with the cheapest insurer. The reason being I have never had to make a claim so I basically back myself to not need to have to find out what an insurer's service is like. I might take a different view if I had an expensive car but mine is only worth about £3.5k.

Herzlos

Ultrasonic wrote: »

Surely parking on the road would increase premiums?

You would think, but common sense and insurance premiums are rarely related. For instance my insurance was cheaper if I left the car on the drive rather than locked in the garage, and it also went down further when I increased my annual mileage, and then increased again when I went for a smaller car.

InsideInsurance

Mass market insurance is based on statistics not "common sense". You can try and rationalise it if you want:

1) Garage - most people who put this dont actually use their garage but their driveway instead, see below for issues with this. If they do use it then there are accidental damage risks when parking (the classic hitting the wall/door on entry). If the garage has windows then you have the same problem as driveway as below

2) Driveway - tells a potential thief where the keys to the car are going to be. Break into the house to steal the keys to steal the car. With so many leaving the keys by the front door, sometimes you dont even need to break into the house.

3) On the road - increased risk of hit and run but that really depends on the area and road type. Reduced risk of theft with keys as the thief wont know which property the keys are in.


As to mileage, there is generally a sweet spot of around 5k-8k. Below this and there is the arguments that your not very experienced a driver and not particularly used to this car 'v' someone who drivers 30k every year in their car and this outweighs the advantage of not being on the road so much. Go above the sweet spot and again the risk of being on the road starts outweighing the benefits of knowing the car better.

ilovelondontown wrote: »

It's been 3 years since I was last in the drivers seat so I feel a bit rusty on how to get the best quotes etc. Any advice?

If its been just under 3 years then the Coop will still honour your NCD

ilovelondontown

Thank you all for your insights, it's been an eye opener, especially the point about mileage, I had no idea! I thought less miles, less cost (and to be fair it's going to be a run around car) but alias I think I've found the best deal I could, especially when some were quoting me over £1k which was :eek:

InsideInsurance

ilovelondontown wrote: »

Thank you all for your insights, it's been an eye opener, especially the point about mileage, I had no idea! I thought less miles, less cost (and to be fair it's going to be a run around car)

Mass market products are easy, large providers have several million customers and have been in business for 20+ years. They can just run a simple query against their data to see the average total cost per year each answer to the mileage question has generated and then feed that into the pricing model.

Beyond the statistics they only really use their grey matter on technical pricing when it comes to doing something brand new where they have no data to go on.

Of cause the quirk of it all is the fact the analysis is done on what people have given in their answers which may not necessarily be true. So in a very crude sample I previously did for a client less than 10% of those who said their car was in the garage every night actually were doing this (in fact a higher percentage didnt even have a garage)

So you arent just asking about people who actually only drive 2,000 miles a year but also those who lie and claim they only drive 2,000 miles a year. You may find financial distress or fraud are a driver for lying about mileage and therefore may also be prone to making false claims for the same reason thus also inflating the claims rates of those that answer 2,000 miles.

It all gets fairly interesting, in a geeky kind of way. Or maybe thats just me?

Ultrasonic

InsideInsurance wrote: »

So in a very crude sample I previously did for a client less than 10% of those who said their car was in the garage every night actually were doing this (in fact a higher percentage didnt even have a garage).

Out of curiousity, do you know what approach insurance companies take if a car insured to be kept in a garage is stolen off the drive, and they subsequently find that no garage even exists?

Interesting insights above, thanks for sharing .