Insurance quote increased £1760 overnight

paper_91

Hi everyone,

I'm a bit confused and would appreciate any advice to try and help me understand what's happened with my quotes. I'm currently 19 years old (male) and was disqualified last year for dangerous driving, very silly mistake and I've learned from my past actions. My ban is due up in the next 6 weeks and I am currently looking at new cars (sold my old one after I got banned) and their different insurance policies.

I was getting quoted around 2k for a 1 litre corsa which I was happy with however whilst checking quotes I was checking multiple cars and changing the named drivers etc. I must have carried out dozens upon dozens of searches, mainly because I would find the same car, same year same mileage etc on 2 different sites and the only difference was the number plates and that would sometimes mean a change of around £300-400.

I chose a car which I was happy with and every week leading up to my ban have just been checking the insurance quote through gocompare, just so I know the rough cost as for the past few months/weeks the cost can sometimes vary by a few hundred, going up and down, which I totally understand. I got a quote last Sunday for £2100 and refreshed my quotes today on gocompare and my cheapest quote was £3860!! No details have changed at all and whilst I was getting 20+ companies offering to insure me suddenly that's dropped to 4 with a lot of the companies who were previously offering some of the best quotes are today saying they are refusing to insure me.

I'm at a complete loss as to why this is. Could it be because I have carried out so many searches? In all my searches I've only ever changed the car, policy start date etc, I haven't been changing my name or address or my conviction or anything else.

How do I go about fixing this? (if possible)
If this is their final say I understand but there must be a reason for such a drastic change.
I won't be able to afford almost 4k on top of the car costs and am really stressed and worried.
I phoned one of the insurers who were previously offering me around 2k who now are offering me a quote for 7k. When I asked them why it had increased by almost 5k in the space of a few days when no details had changed they were completely confused and said they had no idea and couldn't explain it. When I asked them what I should do they said they didn't know.
Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

DCFC79

Did you use your own name when carrying out all these searches ?


If you are just stop now, doing various quotes when changing different parts of the quote flags it up to the insurers what your doing, should use a fake name and address close to where you live.

paper_91

Yes I had been doing that for a while, I know how silly that was and when I first started I used fake name and address because I know you should never use your real details but I got curious once and switched to see if there was any change and forgot and kept using my real details instead of changing back to the fake ones. I've stopped but I didn't realise there would be such a change overnight to such an extent. If I leave it for a few weeks/months do you think it will go back down again? When I asked the insurance company the woman looked through my previous searches and said she still didn't understand why it increased so much. The fact that literally overnight I've had 20+ insurers suddenly refuse to cover me makes me think there is a record or I have been flagged on some central database or something and not sure how I go about finding out how to remedy it.

kelevraz

I assume you had been mentioning your disqualification when getting all your 2k quotes?

Lorian

Has your license been cancelled?

paper_91

Yes everything on my 2k quotes was accurate, the only thing I had been changing was the car registration (as at this point I still haven't decided what car I would choose), the start date of the policy and whether it was fully comp or third party etc. Around 1-2 months ago I was doing a lot of searches for different vehicles etc but when I chose the car I wanted I stopped and only did one or two searches every other week or so for the past month so it's not like I've even been doing a lot of searches recently.

paper_91

My licence hasn't been reissued but I asked the insurer about this and they said to declare the ban accurately and make sure the dates of the start of the policy were correct and it would be fine as my licence is due to be reissued automatically. I can't say this isn't it but I don't understand why it would suddenly have appeared and the insurer was aware of this and still said they didn't understand the price increase.

kelevraz

I think in theory you could raise a complaint about it with any one of the insurers.. you could then potentially take it to the ombudsman?

Do you have any quotes at the 2k mark that were valid for 30 days? In your email inbox or anything? Most insurer's offer your quote for no longer than 30 days, it could just be that its now showing correctly as your within 30 days of quoting?

Soworried

My 19 year old sons insurance is 3K without ever having a ban

kelevraz

you must live in a pretty horrible area for theft lol, or he has a very nice car.. plenty of 19 yr olds get insured for under half of that if they have a clean driving record

paper_91

Yes I would consider the ombudsman but my problem is I think since every insurer across multiple companies has reacted the same way there must be a reason for it, if it were one or two price increases here and there I could understand so just trying to pinpoint problem and try and resolve it instead of going to ombudsman first as their justification for the price increase might be valid argument but based on false facts. I have the emails saying 2k but when I click on it and the webpage loads it either will say error and ask me to submit a new quote or it comes up a new quote thousands higher.