Length of car ownership determines policy prices

Herzlos

I always assumed the pricing was better for a car you had for a while due to familiarity; you're less likely to have an accident whilst trying to find the lights, or getting the controls wrong or misjudging the size on a car you've had for years.

I always find the renewal quote is high to take advantage of the lazy/distracted. My renewals are always higher than the previous year and I usually get about £200 knocked off for asking them about it.

DUTR

Herzlos wrote: »

I always assumed the pricing was better for a car you had for a while due to familiarity; you're less likely to have an accident whilst trying to find the lights, or getting the controls wrong or misjudging the size on a car you've had for years.

I always find the renewal quote is high to take advantage of the lazy/distracted. My renewals are always higher than the previous year and I usually get about £200 knocked off for asking them about it.

I've found that it has bee less favourable the longer I have owned a car.

Takmon

tsam19 wrote: »

Of course it makes good business sense to keep the same regular customers.

Insurance companies, all companies in general hate losing customers. That means they have to come up with new deals to entice people to come back to them. Yet if they rewarded the existing customers there'd be no need for them to be constantly fixing their prices.

Years ago I was always told, if you dont make a claim. Your policy price would decrease the year later if you stayed with the same group. We like to keep our customers. We'll beat any other quote so check witth us first before moving on.

That all seems to have changed now. Its now all about how long you've had your car for. Your not merited for how long you've been driving nor how many claims you havent had. As thats the way it used to be years ago. Any driver from the 80s or 90s will know this.

These days they take into account of loads of factors; for example the colour of the car, age of the driver, no claims discount, number of claims, even how long before renewal you get a quote. This is all part of an elaborate computer model with hundreds of factors to determine the insurance premium.

Due to the use of comparison sites they have to offer the best possible prices to get the new customers. They then hope they will auto renew and pay a higher premium the year after as this Is how they make their money.

Insurance companies only make a few percent profit so if they offered this discounted price to existing customers they would go out of business.

tsam19 wrote: »

And as for people buying new cars who find them difficult to drive and for fear of having an accident in them for not concentrating on driving. But focussing more on the actual features in the cars. Probably should have taken them on a test drive first.

Why anyone would spend good money on a car they aren't comfortable driving is bizzare.:eek:

Some people are just bad drivers in any car and when they have to get a new car they have to just put up with it until they get used to it.

Penelopa.Pitstop

I was told this by Admiral a couple of years ago, when I complained that my insurance is going up. They told me, that's because I'm changing the car and I don't know it, there's biggest risk (I was changing from the same brand and same age, so almost identical functionality). And they also told me, it will be cheaper next year. Of course it wasn't cheaper next year, it was more expensive. I think next year, they told me some other reason why it's more expensive.

Also some other anomaly is the fact, that less powerfull and cheaper model of the same car is more expensive to insure, because it's in higher insurance group (probably due to bigger wheels). So I lost half of horse power and about 10K of value, yet the insurance is more expensive. Every reason is good to hike the price.

I'm stuck with Admiral since 2012 and can't find cheaper/better policy since then. I haggle every year, to get down the price after renewal.

jimbo6977

Motor insurance is one of the most competitive industries in the country. Yes there are dodgy doings such as hiking premiums for loyal customers, but it's pretty easy to shop around.

As to reasons why one car/driver/address etc is cheaper than another, each insurer will have hundreds of criteria fed into a algorithm that cost millions to develop, running on computers that cost millions to buy and maintain, and at the end of it the insurer makes an undewriting profit between -3% and +3%.

If it was easy money like many people seem to think, everyone would be doing it.

sevenhills

If you have owned to same car for a number of years, you are likely to know its dimensions and be able to judge your driving better.

Buy a different car and it is 6" longer, BANG.