Car insurance technicality

MaggieBaking

I've bought a car today and it is sitting on the drive with no insurance! :eek: (only for 30 mins or so but I am feeling the urgency...)

I am hoping to sell my current one tomorrow so we are really only a "one car" household. However I am asked on the insurance quote things how many cars I own ... So am I going to have to say I own 2, and then change it in 24 hours and pay an administration fee to do that? Or change the price I am charged?

It's a bit late to be phoning up insurance companies as a lot of their phone lines have closed for the evening.

Any advice much appreciated!

hcb42

well if you sell it tomorrow and insure the other one tomorrow...you have answered your own question..

sithemadmonkey

I would do it the other way round - say you've got one car (as that is essentially going to be the case in 24hrs). Only if you decide for whatever reason to keep the other car would I call and change it over.

The only possible situation that this could cause is if you have an accident before you sell the other car - how likely is that to happen??

MaggieBaking

Thanks for the advice

Aretnap

If you sell the other one tomorrow you shouldn't need a new policy - just phone the company which insures the old car and ask them to transfer the policy over to the new car. There may be an admin fee to pay, and some extra premium if the new car is more expensive to insure than the old one, but there's a good chance (check though) that it will work out cheaper than cancelling the old policy and taking out a new one. This assumes that your current insurer is willing to insure your new car, but if they're both fairly normal cars and you're not trading up from a Ford to a Ferrari that won't usually be a problem.

The better insurers will even give you an overlap of a week or two where they'll insure both cars at little or no extra cost.

oscarward

When I swapped cars not so long back I transferred cover to the new car in advance, to get the tax disc, but the paperwork said start cover from midnight not the arranged time of 10am.

I queried this as I would be driving to do the exchange in the morning and was told they (direct line) covered both cars for 24 hours to allow this eventuality.