Low Mileage & Increasing Insurance Premiums

kilby_007

I have a car that I drive twice once every 5 week shift (30 mile round trip) and my wife uses around 6 times (20 mile round trip) so around 150 miles per shift. I might do a couple of short journeys a week to the shops so let's call it 200 miles per shift or 2080 miles per year. Add in a couple of longer journeys that I might make on a rare occasion, so 3000 miles should easily cover it.

I found that when I lowered my mileage in the various quote engines from 6000 to 3000 the premiums actually increased?? What's going on here?

Aretnap

People who drive very low mileages often do so because they're rather nervous, inexperienced drivers, who end up having more accidents than more confident drivers who do more miles.

Plus some people dishonestly claim to do list mileages than they actually do in the (not necessarily correct) belief that it will reduce their premium.

The result is that if you put down an extremely low mileage (and 3000 is very low indeed) you can end up being seen as a higher risk than someone who does a mileage than is average, or slightly below average. Obviously premiums do start going up again once you get into much higher mileage.

System

Is over-estimating your mileage "because you might need it" and don't want to get caught out exceeding your allowance actually fraudulent? In the same way as estimating 10,000 but actually doing 20,000 would be?

If you have a low mileage policy, eg classic, you can ring them up if you realise you are going to exceed the limit by 100, or 500 say, and they either give you the extra or make a small charge. How would that work if you realised you might be going to do a lower mileage?

Aretnap

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

If you have a low mileage policy, eg classic, you can ring them up if you realise you are going to exceed the limit by 100, or 500 say, and they either give you the extra or make a small charge. How would that work if you realised you might be going to do a lower mileage?

Classic car and other limited mileage polices are aimed at a very different market to standard estimated mileage policies because the cars they cover tend to be second cars. Hence you don't see the effect of premiums rising when the mileage is very low, so the question of telling them that you aren't going to do your full mileage doesn't really arise. If you have a classic car or a sports car insured for 2000 miles a year then it's probably because it's a fun car that you only use for a few weekends in summer - and you do most of your driving in your other car. OTOH nobody has a Ford Fiesta as a weekend fun car - so if you have a Fiesta insured for 200 miles a year it probably means that's all the driving you ever do.

(This is also why insurers tend to ask questions like "do you own/have access to another car" - they're aimed at teasing out whether you drive more than the number of miles on the proposal form suggests)