Car Insurance Article Discussion

zkw29

greencode wrote: »

Not when I spoke to them last it wasn't... I was contemplating leaving them around a month ago and called to find out how much I would be charged - they said £13 admin charge. I've since had to change my car on the policy and also got charged £13 for that as well.

The admin fee for ammendments is anthing up to £17.85 but the cancellation charge is one months premium. I think the £13 must have been what you would owe them if you cancelled it (taking into account what you had already paid them)

greencode

zkw29 wrote: »

The admin fee for ammendments is anthing up to £17.85 but the cancellation charge is one months premium. I think the £13 must have been what you would owe them if you cancelled it (taking into account what you had already paid them)

Apologies for giving the wrong information. The one month premium is not too bad depending on how much your monthly payments are. I'm presuming "witsend40" is paying quite a lot anyway.

jfmkent

HELP I've taken out two car insurance policies with Privilege via TOPCASHBACK, start of July, and now need to submit a cashback claim for them, I may be being stoopid, but i cannot see anywhere on the TCB site how to do this, I know that there is now a 3 month period before any cash, but i guess you have to submit clain within the TCB's 50 day rule, which is fast running out. Any ideas?

wisdomcalls

What do people think of paying for insurance after the object being insured (the car) no longer exists? It just seems fraudulent to me to demand payment for no service...becuase the company surely cannot insure an non existing car? Maybe Im missing something- But I refuse to give away money to an insurance company after the policy has been cancelled, especially when nothing was claimed.

FlameCloud

wisdomcalls wrote: »

What do people think of paying for insurance after the object being insured (the car) no longer exists? It just seems fraudulent to me to demand payment for no service...becuase the company surely cannot insure an non existing car? Maybe Im missing something- But I refuse to give away money to an insurance company after the policy has been cancelled, especially when nothing was claimed.

I'm assuming you have a monthly contract and your car has been written off/scrapped?

If this is the case then yes, you do have to continue paying the policy. This is because in essence the insurers loan you the money and they spread the cost over 12 months. As such, you have purchased a year long contract. You cannot simply cancel contracts when you like, that is the entire idea of them.

You will have to cancel the policy properly, although how much you have to continue to pay will depend on how long is left. You'll also have to pay a cancellation charge.

Hal

We have 3 cars (my car, wife's car, and family mpv).

MPV was insured through Diamond. Renewal quote was £650 or so.
I used the price comparison sites but quotes were £700+.
First Direct priced at £470 - which was a result.
Upon forwarding Diamond's renewal notice First Direct advised that because that was a 10-month not a 12-month policy they would charge....(wait for it) ..... an additional £390 or so.
Then I checked out Admiral's Multi-Car policy. What a result, I now have all 3 cars insured for circa £650. (The other 2 were due at the end of this month and I had just received renewal notices of £300 and £450 or so from Elephant on both).

You need to insure 2 or more vehicles to get the multi-car policy.
Your existing insurances do not have to mature at the same time - Admiral quote you on an annual basis (on-line) for each car, and then pro-rata it over the period required. So if one is due now and the other in say 3-months time, you only pay 75% of the annual quote for the other car.

Well worth looking at.

(Oh and Admiral is the owner of our previous insurers (Diamond and Elephant), so the policies were pretty similar.)

hethmar

There are bigger comparison sites chinedu - moneysupermarket, gocompare and so on.

Old hands will know, but any newbies - do check the best policy/price for you and then use one of the cashback sites, e.g. quidco.com to see if you can get cashback on the premium paid. Last year I got £100 back on the prudential policy that I had already chosen as best value for me.(£184 total, less £100 cash back plus they gave me breakdown cover free for a year)

I would say anyone insuring their pets - please check out the pet insurance thread on here as what you think is lifetime cover sadly often isnt.

grannybiker

Despite their advertising, we've actually found it much more expensive.
We paid more for 1st car than other companies quoted for long term gain, (i.e would be cheaper when we added 2nd car when its insurance expired.) Tried to do this today. Current insurer quoted £105 & tax, (OK, it's an old runaround and we've max no claims!) Admiral want £205 to add it to existing multi-car policy £100 more / nearly double!
Been on the phone for an hour, (bl00dy 0871 number too!) trying to make sense of this, but passed from pillar to post and no budging on that inflated figure! In fact, they're chuntering about making us pay more as they say we had a discount on our 1st car on the basis we'd be adding another! Even with this so-called discount they claim we had, the policy was still more expensive than many other quotes.
Their admin / call centre is pretty rubbish too, you pay for the privilege of calling them, yet they can't seem to carry out their role accurately. They messed us about originally, making mistakes and getting our registration details wrong. Today's phone call ended with us being cut off and our questions / issues unresolved.

Update: To add insult to injury, they 've now sent us a letter telling us they'll take £30 from the credit card we originally paid on. This is to repay the "Discount" (remember, the original car was MORE expensive than other policies, but we took the long term view!) we received when taking out a multicar policy. Apparently we no longer qualify for this discount as we refused to pay an extra £100 over competitors to add the 2nd car!
Feel frustrated that they can do this, and really annoyed that they're allowed to falsley advertise in this way.
DON'T BOTHER WITH ADMIRAL MULTI-CAR POLICY!

before_hollywood

my insurers shall rename nameless
renewal price was £530 (previous year was £450)
went to go compare, got it for £403, found a policy elsewhere for £345, phoned my insurers, asked why there was a £127 price difference, they claimed car was different as price comparison site has infereor database to them (there are only 2 models of what i have, one has air-con and the other doesn't)
they ''reviewed'' the policy and brought it down to £409, i said i had been offered same cover for £340 elsewhere, they didn't care so it cancels in a few weeks. had i been ignorant i would have been £190 out of pocket :eek:

beardiedog

Just finished trawling through most of the car insurance comparison sites and my conclusion is that most of the cashback and discount carrots offered specifically by the insurance companies/brokers inevitably result in a higher initial premium over those that don't offer specific enticements (other than online discounts). Tell me I'm being cynical but that's how I found it! M & S was the cheapest I could find and I can't be bothered going through the cashback sites just to save another 3% (about £6 even if I ever received it).