GoCompare free £250 excess cover

moneywow1

What's the catch? Can't find much about it on Google/MSE

Current excess is £100, should I bump it up to £250 to reduce the premium?

forgotmyname

Its all in the terms and conditions.

* UPTO £250 refund after a claim is settled.

* Excludes Windows, Breakdown or act of god

You need to follow the instructions also, ref number when taking out the policy not after.

So any claim for glass repair or replacement and the full excess is yours and don't forget its upto £250.

Foibles

I've had reason to try and claim this free excess cover (underwritten by an off-shoot of AXA) recently.
Will report back but currently feels like they're trying to wriggle out of paying.

Sandtree

moneywow1 said:

What's the catch? Can't find much about it on Google/MSE

Current excess is £100, should I bump it up to £250 to reduce the premium?

Why do you think there is a catch? Excess insurance isn't expensive, aggregators charge insurers a lot of money and packaged wholesale insurance is a fraction of the price of consumer insurance. For example if you had a large number of customers and went to one of the big car breakdown companies saying you wanted to give everyone free breakdown insurance then, in my experience, they'd charge you about 25-50% of the customer cost and adding European cover would be free of charge for you (but you could charge your customers an upgrade price). Bigger the number of customers, less car focused your business then the cheaper the price will be.

You need to look at the terms of the policy. Excess policies can be written such that they only payout if the excess is paid and therefore if you bumped up your excess and then had a loss of £249 you couldn't claim anything because its below you excess so the claim was declined. Similary they may not payout anything if the excess exceeds the policy limit so if you have a £250 voluntary excess on your home insurance but the Accident Damage section has a compulsory £50 excess as well then you pay £300 and your excess insurance gives nothing.

Foibles

Foibles said:

I've had reason to try and claim this free excess cover (underwritten by an off-shoot of AXA) recently.
Will report back but currently feels like they're trying to wriggle out of paying.

So I think this is now being paid...
As my accident didn't (directly) involve another vehicle the claim was against my insurance. AXA wanted specific wording about whether it was a 'Fault' claim on my insurance or not (which, as to @Sandtree's point, exceeded £250). Unfortunately my insurer doesn't use this particular terminology for this type of solo incident (road debris damage) so there was some hoop jumping needed there.

N.B. If the claim had been involving an at fault 3rd party then I wouldn't have got the £250 excess back via AXA, which is fair, as they'd expect that I'd claim it back from the 3rd party. 

Sandtree

Foibles said:
Unfortunately my insurer doesn't use this particular terminology for this type of solo incident (road debris damage) so there was some hoop jumping needed there.

N.B. If the claim had been involving an at fault 3rd party then I wouldn't have got the £250 excess back via AXA, which is fair, as they'd expect that I'd claim it back from the 3rd party. 

It is a "fault accident".

Fault in Motor insurance is nothing to do with "blame" but about if at the end of the claim, your insurers will be out of pocket or not. Your parked car is hit and the person drives off (no CCTV) you have a fault claim. Same accident but the person is honest and leaves their details and you then will have a non-fault claim. I wish we didn't use such an emotive word as fault.

Unless you saw the road debris being dropped by a third party or can prove its a maintenance issue (eg an obviously rotten tree thats fallen into the road) then there are no prospects of recovering the money and so a fault claim.

The XS insurers will be wanting to know fault to know if there will be a right to recover your excess from the third party or not. In theory the policy could include the language for subjugation so that they pay you and recover the money from the third party themselves but for the low value its easier to exclude non-fault claims from cover where you get your excess back from the other side anyway.