Change of Occupation - Being Ripped Off?

alexgholmes

Hello all,

This is my first post on the forums, and I attempted to find a similar thread. Although, I did want to question my specific situation and gather some thoughts from you all.

Recently I obtained my first graduate job. My car insurance provider Admiral have told me that it will be a charge of £80 for change of occupation from a student to my new role. I looked on their website for administrative charges, £20 for change of address is one stated. My issue is that I can find no transparency with change of occupation.

There are risks of not informing your provider of change of details before an incident occurs, so I ensured to do this. However, £80 (change of occupation) seems steep.

Please offer your views, it will be helpful!
If you don't wish to respond in text I have also created a poll (or attempted to)

cajef

It depends on what your occupation is, some are considered a far higher risk than others and therefore the premium can increase substantially with a change of circumstances.

elsien

Are you sure the £80 is an admin charge? Could it not be a change to the policy to take your new circumstances and hence changed risk level into account?

csgohan4

you can always shop around when you renew, otherwise you changed midway through which is more riskier in loading more premiums

AnotherJoe

Go on anonymously for a quote and experiment with your job description. There can be a big difference depending exactly what it is, if you can be flexible with it, do so. eg admin assistant and sales admin assistant will likely be different even if its the same job.

The £80 will not be an admin charge, it will be related to your change of occupation.

alexgholmes

Ok thanks for the advice all. Just to add, personally I don't use my car for my new job as a business analyst. I take the train to Birmingham and stay there for the week. However, I doubt my word of this will sway their policy covering a job like a business analyst that may involve lots of travel.

Savvy_Sue

have you checked all the t&c of the policy? For example if you are not using the car for business purposes (other than commuting), then are you paying for business use? I don't know what Admirals standard terms say.

BTW I know you say you're not driving to work, but commuting is fairly standard and you don't want to lose it, you never know when you might want to do that!

eddddy

alexgholmes wrote: »

Ok thanks for the advice all. Just to add, personally I don't use my car for my new job as a business analyst. I take the train to Birmingham and stay there for the week. However, I doubt my word of this will sway their policy covering a job like a business analyst that may involve lots of travel.

They would base the premium (risk) on their past claims experience.

i.e. What you say suggests that they get more claims (or bigger claims) from people who describe their occupation as 'Business Analyst' than people who describe their occupation as 'student'.


But TBH, that sounds a little odd - 'student' is normally seen as a fairly high risk occupation for car insurance.


... so you didn't change any other details at the same time, like address, annual mileage, where the car is kept overnight, named drivers etc?

alexgholmes

There were changes made at the same time which is why I may have confused this change of occupation as an admin fee. We changed address to a safer neighbourhood which cost us £20 admin fee.

Very impressed with and grateful for all of the responses.

Quentin

Although you say your new address is safer it doesn't follow that the premium drops! It may have triggered a premium loading

Ask your insurer to break down the 80 so you know exactly why you had to pay it

Then if you are not happy you can look to see if it's cost effective to cancel and go elsewhere if you find a better deal - though cancelling a policy mid term does trigger another admin fee!

(Your poll now seems pointless as you £80 clearly wasn't an admin fee for changing occupation!)

eddddy

alexgholmes wrote: »

There were changes made at the same time which is why I may have confused this change of occupation as an admin fee. We changed address to a safer neighbourhood which cost us £20 admin fee.

According to their website, Admiral charge a fee of £19.50 for making changes to a policy.

Examples of changes might be change of address, change of occupation, change of named driver etc, etc

If you made a number of changes (e.g. address and occupation) in one phone call, I'd guess they'd only charge you £19.50 once.

So there must be something about the changes you made, that makes you a higher risk.

(FWIW, you might think that your new address is safer, but Admiral may not agree.)