No claims discount/bonus

angrycrow

kmb500 wrote: »

Who cares if you lie on your insurance policy, as long as you don't make a claim it doesn't matter. Also some things there is no way they can check (e.g. you should put your mileage as low as possible as they cannot ever prove it)

As already suggested the publically available online mot history for your vehicle shows what mileage it is covering and some insurers do now check this as standard in the event of a claim. False declaration can result in voidance of the policy.

Aretnap

No Claims Discount is nothing more than a marketing gimmick offered by insurance companies on some types of policy. There are no specific laws governing it, any more than there are laws which dictate how many Clubcard points Tesco has to give you when you do your shopping. Insurers can offer it on any terms they like, or not offer it at all, and in turn if you don't like their terms you can vote with your feet and take your business elsewhere.

NCD was originally a form of loyalty discount, intended to encourage customers (especially the good ones who didn't make claims) to renew with the same insurer year in year out - as that was the only way you'd keep your NCD. Of course soon enough insurers started to offer to match each others NCDs, not because they were under any moral or legal obligation to do so, but because they found they had to do so in order to poach customers from other companies - just like Sainsbury's might offer to accept Tesco's money off vouchers from time to time.

If you were insuring a new car for the first time then you weren't renewing a policy, so you didn't have any NCD to use on it, and as a result there was no incentive for any other company to offer you one either. From that point of view the fact that the discount can only be used on one policy at a time makes perfect sense - and complaining about it is a bit like getting a "£10 off your next shop" voucher from Tesco, then complaining that you can't use it four times at four different supermarkets.

That's the theory anyway. In practice of course NCD has been rather uncomfortably crowbarred into the general underwriting criteria which insurers use to calculate prices, so if you have a second car, and it genuinely is a second car for you and not a car for your teenage son, then some insurers will be happy to mirror your NCD, or to offer you a roughly equivalent discount. However as as that's a relatively uncommon situation it won't always be well served by the comparison sites which are aimed at the 90% of the population who have fairly normal circumstances, such as owning one car each. If you have needs which are out of the ordinary you have to be willing to put a bit more effort into phoning round and speaking to real people, rather than just ticking boxes on a website.

What you're not allowed to do is lie about your no claims bonus, even if you think your insurer's rules are unfair. If they ask if your NCD is currently being used on another policy (or list it in their assumptions) then you must tell them, or risk having your policy voided for false representation. To give another supermarket analogy, if you think Tesco are charging you too much for bananas then you are free to buy them from Asda instead. What you're not free to do is steal a few from Tesco every now and then to redress the balance.

kmb500

angrycrow wrote: »

As already suggested the publically available online mot history for your vehicle shows what mileage it is covering and some insurers do now check this as standard in the event of a claim. False declaration can result in voidance of the policy.

wow, I never knew MOT details were public knowledge, I just looked up my car's history.
Well, I still don't care, they gave me the policy anyway so it doesn't matter, if I had done too many miles maybe they should have checked.

glentoran99

kmb500 wrote: »

wow, I never knew MOT details were public knowledge, I just looked up my car's history.
Well, I still don't care, they gave me the policy anyway so it doesn't matter, if I had done too many miles maybe they should have checked.

Why buy insurance at all then? You aren't going to be covered anyway

wongataa

kmb500 wrote: »

I just keep dropping the mileage and refreshing the quote, see what it does. After all - how am I to know how many miles I'll do in the following year?

It is usually quite easy to estimate. How many did you do last year? Use that number. Or, see how far it is to work, multiply that distance by the number of times you drive there and add a suitable amount for non commuting trips. I did that and came pretty close to what I actually drove.

Car_54

kmb500 wrote: »

These money-grabbing scam artists will charge people as much as people are willing to hand over.

You're the one who's admitting to a money-grabbing scam.

jimjames

angrycrow wrote: »

As already suggested the publically available online mot history for your vehicle shows what mileage it is covering and some insurers do now check this as standard in the event of a claim. False declaration can result in voidance of the policy.

And if no MOT then service records would show too.

bigadaj

Come on people, it's not difficult, easy enough to clock the car....

kmb500

wongataa wrote: »

It is usually quite easy to estimate. How many did you do last year? Use that number. Or, see how far it is to work, multiply that distance by the number of times you drive there and add a suitable amount for non commuting trips. I did that and came pretty close to what I actually drove.

I have no idea what I do on a yearly basis, I'm quite happy to tell my insurer that I think I will do roughly what the policy said I would. Also my insurance renews 6 months after/before the MOT so not very easy to prove what mileage I've done while insured by them.