Car Insurance Article Discussion

landie_lover

My car is currently insured with the post office.On the day it expires it is midnight.the renewal quote is £60 more than if I was a new customer.How do I get round this,to get the cheaper insurance? Thanks.

raskazz

froggy_girl128 wrote: »

My partner has called budget to change the car and they have said it will be £30 to change it over or £30 to cancel.
Is this common practise ?

Very common. To lower premiums insurers cover the costs of many customer service functions through fees for mid-term changes.

The charges are enforceable as long as they are disclosed to the policyholder and are not excessive.

raskazz

landie_lover wrote: »

My car is currently insured with the post office.On the day it expires it is midnight.the renewal quote is £60 more than if I was a new customer.How do I get round this,to get the cheaper insurance? Thanks.

Simple. Call the Post Office to tell them you are declining their renewal. Then set up the quote you had so that it will commence the instant your renewal is lapsed.

Erconwald

Hi,
Despite doing a web price comparison using several sites when I came to renew my car insurance - the lowest I was offered was £335 yet going direct to M&S the premium came out over £80 cheaper. Particular bonus of insuring with M&S is free National and European breakdown cover and Keycare (which replaces lost keys etc.) They also give £20 voucher for recommending friend, plus £20 voucher to friend who insures......

Skiday

In answer to Raskazz above.

Thank you for your full reply.

It would seem that you may have worked for an insurer or are an underwriter perhaps. Clearly what you have said would make sense to the insurer from his point of view but I stand by my overall point of view that these issues do not stand up to 'common sense'. Whilst I am not going to go over all points again, just as an example I refer to the first point made about TPF&T being more expensive than fully comp. Yes the reasoning you give makes sense, but only to the insurer from his point of view, it still does not make 'common sense'

Does any one else (who does not work in insurance) think that fully comp being cheaper than TPF&T makes any sense?

I was in my local computer shop the other day wanting CD envelopes. He (the owner) had packets of 50 or 100, both were priced at £3.99 (this is true, I swear) when I said I thought that was odd that 50 cost the same as 100, so why would I buy 50? he explained about getting them from different suppliers (although they were identical envelopes) and it made perfect sense to him. But obviously it would make little sense to anyone else. It is because I am not an insurer and don't know how they work things out that I am only able to view things from a point of common sense, and I think your suggestion that I need to 'brush up on my utmost common sense' was quite unnecessary.

raskazz

Skiday wrote: »

It is because I am not an insurer and don't know how they work things out that I am only able to view things from a point of common sense, and I think your suggestion that I need to 'brush up on my utmost common sense' was quite unnecessary.

OK, perhaps that was quite flippant and I apologise but it was primarily in repsonse to your comment about being 'selective with the truth' with insurers. I urge you to inform your insurers asap about any information that was not disclosed to them or misrepresented as you can find yourself in a whole world of trouble if you have to claim and they fnid out that you have been dishonest.

Skiday

Reply to Raskazz - Apology accepted. I realise the risk.

To All – Especially Martin! (if he has the time to read this)

It is my hope that all in this thread will be read and taken on board by Martin, and that he might get a little hot under the collar like he does about banks. Insurance companies are there to make money out of us and I can see very little evidence (none actually) that they apply the mathematical laws of risk fairly and evenly. So many comments in this thread are from people who feel that the companies are conspiring to get it all their own way.

More anecdotes….

When I changed address to 3 miles down the road to a similar estate in a similar area, and where cars simply do not get stolen – ever (the Isle of Wight) my premium went up by 25% even though I reduced my mileage from 5k to 3k. I just did two ‘Joe Bloggs’ quotations on line with identical details bar the postcode and the difference – 3.4%. My wife was/is with a different insurer, and with no changes at all other than postcode, her premium went down by more than 25%. Evidence like this points to the conclusion that they charge what they think they can get away with rather than what the risk tables indicate they should. Even though some may win on the swings when others loose on the roundabouts, I think it is a scandal and I would like people, and especially Martin, to speak up about it.

By the way, before the days of Jeremy Vine, I remember Jimmy Young telling the tale of a conversation between him and his broker. When Jimmy Young remonstrated over the high cost of his car insurance due to him being a broadcaster, his broker said (true story!) in all seriousness,
“You’re a broadcaster for the BBC, you could have the Prime Minister in your car!” Jimmy said he couldn’t believe how daft that was. I can’t believe nothing has changed.

I can reach no conclusion other than that they pretty much make it up as they go along, and if they want me to believe otherwise then they will have to do what I did in maths class at school and show their workings! Show the risk tables and the accident and claim statistics. They could put it all on the web. My maths teacher said to us
“If you don’t show your workings, I will assume you have cheated” I feel the same way.

Tipp-Ex

:eek: Is this right. I have followed Martin's tips to reduce my car insurance. I had a good price from Swinton on the web. I rang them up and was told because a car had ran into the side of my parked car 3 years ago while it was parked on the road (I was away at the) my car premiums would go up. The other driver accepted full liability and the claim was made on their insurance. Is this correct that it is considered I made a claim even though it was not on my insurance? I thought a claim was when you claimed on your own insurance. :money: :money: Martin if this is correct can you start a campaign like the bank charges to have it stopped. The person from the insurance company said it was the same as if someone had stollen my car and I made a claim. I don't feel that it is. If someone steels my car and I make a claim yes this is a claim on my insurance. Surely if the claim is made on the other person's insurance who admitted full liability it should not affect my :cool: insurance.

raskazz

Non-fault claims do affect premiums. To understand why all you have do is to understand how premiums are calculated. Insurers amploy actuaries to crunch a load of numbers, looking at claims statistics, historical data and trends, in order to work out how all the different factors such as age, gender, occupation, mileage etc affect how much an insurer is likely to pay out in claims and therefore what premium should be set.

In the case of non-fault incidents, they raise the premium simply because the data shows that if you have been involved in a non-fault incident then you are more likely to be involved in a fault incident then someone who has not been involved in any sort of incident. Simple as that. This operates in the same way that many other factors outside your control - i.e. gender, age, the risk of the area in which you live - affect the premium. It's not unfair - it would be more unfair to charge someone who statistics show is a lower risk the same premium as someone who statistics show is a higher risk.

captainhaddock

wrong area sorry!