Car Insurance Article Discussion

SAVINGMUM_2

Hi, bit of advice needed - do i need Legal Protection on my car insurance. Ive always paid for it in the past, but not really sure what its for or whether i need it?

Thanks in advance

chivers1977

Take it. it hardly costs anything and if you have an accident, it will be invaluable to try and recover medical costs, compensation for pain and your excess.

ChrisCar_2

SAVINGMUM wrote: »

Hi, bit of advice needed - do i need Legal Protection on my car insurance. Ive always paid for it in the past, but not really sure what its for or whether i need it?

Thanks in advance

Take it.
Someone tried to sue me, little accident, his fault but he thought he could put a claim in for a whiplash injury.
I had legal insurance but they would only fight it by putting in a counter claim.
He lost.
I got my excess paid, count costs and £2,000 compensation.
Not bad for something I was going to put down to experience before he tried to sue me.

Sunday_Morning

Here's my experience on using Martins article.

I have to begin here.. which links to a post I put up about Drive Assist some time ago. If it were not for the experience I had with this firm that provided me with my courtesy car included on the insurance I had with Zurich, then I may have simply rang Zurich to renew my insurance with them for the fifth year for the £497 they quoted me. that's all I had ever done...not even looked just blindly renewed.

But look I did and so I came to notice that, as I filled in my details for the comparison sites, my renewal quote anyway did not include information about the two sppeding fines each that my wife and I had had over the last five years. I rang them up to mention this and they charged me £10 as a pro rata addition for the remaining two weeks of the policy and upped my renwal quote to £558.

The sites gave me optimism, actually certainty, that cheaper quotes were out there. However I was certainly a bit put out to discover that it's not quite a case of doing exactly what they say on the tin.....

From Money Supermarket...a Kwik Fit quote I had which mentioned £100 as the excess in the policy details on the comparison site...turned into a £200 excess when I progressed onto their site. they also had this sneakly little bit on their site...

We may use the information you give to make you aware of financial products and special offers which could save you money. For this purpose we may also share your information with Kwik-Fit Group companies and other carefully selected third parties. This may be by telephone or e-mail.


Please tick the box if you do not wish to be contacted by Email

Cunning huh? No way out if you don't want them to telephone you!!!!!!!!!!

On one of the other sites I got a quote from Bell for £437 which transformed into £488 upon calling them as instructed. The guy Nigel was ok, but he admitted he didn't know why the quote was different when the only additional detail he had added was to put down I had two kids under 16! I knew kids were expensive but.....!

The cheapest quote I saw, way cheaper than anything else, was for Auto Direct which showed up on the Tesco Compare site as a quote of £295 including courtesy car and ncb protection and no voluntary excess.

However, on further pursuit, this turned into a quote of £397 without ncb protection!

It's a shame that £100 disappeared into thin air, but with my renewal imminent, I nevertheless opted to take this one up, still saving around £160 on the renewal quoted by Zurich.

A special word for Swinton. They seemed to appear on most of the comparison sites and were reasonable cheap with it at around £450. But not only did I almost immediately receive emails from them upon getting the comparative prices, but I also got a phone call as well...even before I'd had a chance to really look through all the quotes! I put them aside on the "reasonable but too pushy for me" pile!

Finally a big word of thanks to Martin, without whose forum I would have paid well over the odds for the renewal of my car insurance. :T

easy_tiger_3

just used mse.com for the first time to renew my car insurance saved £250 with kwik fit and recieved a free mot for the car i was insuring at any kwik fit garage happy days!

koru

A&L ostensibly seem to have the best price beater promise going. If they can't beat your renewal premium, you get a year's free cover:
https://www.alliance-leicester.co.uk/insurance/index.asp?page=home

Sounds great, but I assume that in practice this means they will always come in just below your renewal premium. (eg, Assume their normal premium would be £290, but your renewal is £250. They either have to offer you £249 or give you free cover. I think it is obvious what they will do.) I would be fascinated to hear of anyone who actually gets the free cover.

ch26

My 17 year old son wants to buy an oldish Ford Ka and insure it. Cheapest quote so far is around £1400. Anyone got any tips/ideas where we could get it any cheaper? Thanks.

pkempc

koru wrote: »

A&L ostensibly seem to have the best price beater promise going. If they can't beat your renewal premium, you get a year's free cover:
www.alliance-leicester.co.uk/insurance/index.asp?page=home

Sounds great, but I assume that in practice this means they will always come in just below your renewal premium. (eg, Assume their normal premium would be £290, but your renewal is £250. They either have to offer you £249 or give you free cover. I think it is obvious what they will do.) I would be fascinated to hear of anyone who actually gets the free cover.

My Zurich renewal ( includes NCP, breakdown cover & legal ) - £275.17

A & L quote ( including NCP but excludes legal & breakdown cover ) - £ 246.50. According to A&L T&C this beats my Zurich renewal as legal & breakdown cover are 'optional extras' so no free years cover

However, revised A&L quote adding in the 'optional extras' - £337.50

Me thinks I'll keep shopping around.

dkeogh

What a great in-depth article, I can't think of any car owner who wouldn't find this useful (consider it bookmarked and syndicated, the whole nine yards!:T)

100% market search with just six comparison sites is fantastic, I've always advised friends and family to check more than one or two but this system should help even more.

My personal favourite tip is to haggle, too many people are too scared to try (that's the reserved British way I suppose).

Will certainly give this method a try when my insurance is up for renewal

Cheers :beer:

payless

One might want to accidently have fat fingers when inputting your tel no. in this sites .... seemed to get loads of calls , even if I tick the no contact box