Admiral car insurance renewal rip off -advice needed

robocop1

Hi,

My 3 car multicar insurance policy is up for renewal at Admiral and after receiving my renewal premium of north than £1200 I decided to get another quote with them as a new customer.

Interestingly, Admiral won't let you do a new quote (or even amend your existing policy) online if you are already a customer so I got round the issue by using my neighbours house number next door and by moving my DOB back by one day. All other details were identical.

Low and behold the revised quote came in at cira £700 which only helped to fuel my suspicions that they discount new customers to get the business before raising the premiums from the next year onwards.

Armed with this info I rang up their call centre to find out why. At this point I should say their staff were very helpful. They amended the online quote to reflect my actual house number which made no difference, but when they corrected my DOB to make me one day older the quote jumped back up to £950. Their agent agreed this was hard to believe/understand so said he would consult with their pricing team and call back.

True to his word, he did call back today however he confirmed his pricing team said this was correct and there was nothing he could do.

I find it very hard to believe that simply amending a quote to make a person one day older (with all other details being identical) can raise a premium but £250? I have a completely clear licence with over 15 years NCB and have been with them for 5 years. I suspect it's their system recognising me as an existing customer and removing some discount??

I am going to make a formal compliant tomorrow however in between, has anyone else had a similar experience or thoughts on the situation?

Thanks

robocop1

Further to the above, while waiting for call back i did another quote in my wife's name, again with all other details being identical and listing me as a named/main driver on the two cars as per my current policy. This also came up around the £700 mark so if all else fails, is there any reason why I shouldn't cancel my policy and simply take a new one out in her name?

Thanks again!

Aretnap

Your right - it's the system recognising you as an existing customer and removing the new customer discount. It's quite standard to offer discounts to new customers to bring in new business, which is why it tends to pay to switch insurers regularly. Sometimes if you threaten to leave they'll reduce the quote to what they'd offer you as a new customer. But competition is currently so intense that some insurers are underpricing the risk (essentially selling at a loss) to attract new customers, and obviously they're not going to keep giving you that big a discount year after year - they'd rather cut their losses and let you go if you're not going to accept a higher renewal premium.

Not much point complaining about their pricing policy as it's a standard mode and one they're entitled to use. Not really any different to the fact that Virgin gave name my first three months half price when I signed up to their TV and broadband package - can I complain about the fact that they didn't give me the next 3 months half price as well?

Incidentally insurers love multicar policies for the same reason that Virgin love combined TV/phone/broadband packages - the more things you would have to sort out if you moved, the more hassle moving feels, so the easier it is to nudge up the price without people leaving. The solution is to shop around, and if you can find a better deal elsewhere (as a multicar policy of as 3 single car policies) go for that instead.

Added - yes, if if you can get the new customer discount by taking out the multicar policy in your wife's name rather than your own then there's no reason not to do it, so long as you are careful to correctly declare who is the registered keeper and main driver of each car, if asked.

[Deleted User]

They recognize you by name and DOB. They don't care about address because you might move house, but your name and DOB rarely change. The obviously jack the price up for you, just to show some love to their existing customers.

Bridges22

Yeah I had a similar experience today and I'm actually looking round to see what I can do about it. I'm a fairly new driver and I was just trying to put my mom on my insurance as a named driver. But in the process I found out they did not have my correct date of birth, they had 1983 instead of 1993. The man said that changing this would cost me £130. This led to some debat, but in the end I had little choice but to agree to pay. After which I was told they had made a mistake. They actually charged me £330. They claimed this is because they had to back track my claim to September and also because my current policy was for a 31 year old. This was complete rubbish. We'd actually checked several comparison sights and got plenty of quoted and I was eventually persuaded to go for Admiral. The Quote for a 21 year old on all of them was around £600 but they had increased mine to 900 and were actually telling me that was the correct amount.

At this point I tired to cancel and some of my money back, but they only agreed to refund me £150 of the £600 I'd paid for 12 months, even though only 5 months had passed. I was of course quite upset. Especially since they claimed if I did not pay the full amount that day they would cancel my Policy and I would get nothing. but I didn't have the money for that and In the end I got them to agree to a payment in installments, since it would theoretically be cheaper overall than cancelling, and with only £150 back I would be unable to afford a new policy. They then told me that i had to pay 360, and that it had always been that much. After all this they began asking again about adding my mom to the policy. I told them to forget it. So they asked me to pay a cancellation fine. In the end I didn't pay that one considering she was never even put on to it in the first place.

That being said I have no intention of paying the remaining £260 if I can help it. There is no way that all of this is okay, and I'm going to find out everything I can on how to fix this, and any help anyone could give would be great.