Car Insurance Article Discussion

Quentin

When you decided to take out third party insurance, then your own car wasn't covered for any damage at all by your policy, so you were correctly told to "get on with it" by your own insurers.

You need to chase the third party yourself (or appoint a claim handler to deal with this for you).

oafctitch

I have recently moved 1 mile down the road from my previous address and my insurance company want to charge me £275 for the pleasure. can they do this? It is the same postal area with only the last two digits of the postcode differing to the previous address. I struggled originally to get insurance as i need left foot accelerator and a steering aid due to a medical condition and nobody was willing to insure me, appart from said company. what can i do? HELP!!

halx

I will soon have to renew my car insurance and would like to include my wife. She holds a provisional licence at the moment but eventually she will exchange it for a full licence (I hope :rolleyes:). If I include her right now with the provisional one what would I have to expect when she gets the full licence before the insurance is due for renewal (and obviously I want to keep her insured)? Would I just need to have my motor statement updated (paying the necessary admin fees) or would I have to cancel the current policy (paying the cancellation fee) and get new cover?

Quentin

Check the situation with your insurer as some will happily offer cover to provisional licence holders, but once they become full licence holders don't want to cover them until they have held the licence (say) a year.

But normally an insurer would allow you to make the change mid term (charging the admin fee you mentioned), but would also make a premium change (upwards!)

raskazz

oafctitch wrote: »

I have recently moved 1 mile down the road from my previous address and my insurance company want to charge me £275 for the pleasure. can they do this? It is the same postal area with only the last two digits of the postcode differing to the previous address. I struggled originally to get insurance as i need left foot accelerator and a steering aid due to a medical condition and nobody was willing to insure me, appart from said company. what can i do? HELP!!

It may well be right as many insurers use the full postcode to rate the risk. Rates have generally increased as well.

As long as you have notified the DVLA of your condition and they are happy for you to continue holding a licence IMO it would be very unfair for insurers to not quote on the basis of the vehicle modifications, not to mention a possible breach of the Disability Discrimination Act.

At the most I would expect them to perhaps exclude driving other cars cover due to your specific requirements in terms of vehicle controls.

Let us know which insurers will not quote for you and the reasons that they give.

ernie-money

Hi all,

I'm hoping for some advice from someone more knowledgeable...

I've got my quotes from gocompare and the two cheapest companies for me, 1st Central & Quinn Direct, I have instantly discarded, after reading about them on here.
After that, the next cheapest quotes are from the Co-operative, swiftcover, Santander and RAC, with reasonably similar prices, then Octagon, who includes protection against uninsured drivers for free as a special offer, after that Renault Insurance & Alliance & Leicester. After that, the prices start going upwards rather steeply.
Out of these companies, is any better than the rest, or any I should stay clear of?

Would really appreciate help from someone with more experience of insurance companies than I have!
Thanks a lot
Mia

jenny_f

I've just had a letter of automatic renewal from Tesco (I didn't think I was on automatic renewal!).

Anyway I know I can tell them to see the current policy out and not renew (or so someone has told me). The reason being is that although I've moved address my insurance has doubled!!! (to £700)

I've just done some quote and have got £400 from the Post Office, more expensive than last year but still cheaper than Tesco - then £30 or so back from quidco.

Any one any experience of Post Office??

rudekid48

jenny_f wrote: »

Any one any experience of Post Office??

I've used them a couple of times for letters and things. They're a bit slow but their posties are friendly enough.

HELS

Thought I would warn everyone thinking of renewing with AVIVA on-line (to get £10 discount), check the policy details carefully with your paper renewal. My on-line was £28 more and didn't include NCD, car security details and a different excess. Waiting for them to open to discuss this as paper renewal was very competitive.

mikestH

Hello everyone. Please bear with me as this is my first post so if it's in the wrong place etc. apologies to all in advance.

I just wanted to add my tuppence worth and say I've learned the following whilst getting insurance for my 19 year old Son, who's had his licence for 2 months:

1) Using the price comparison sites is a good starting point to get a shortlist of companies to try;

2) Approaching them directly does often yield better results (cheaper):j;

3) Any quotes that are unusually low (and even those that appear "normal") should be investigated (we almost went with Quinn before I did a quick search) to make sure everythign you need is covered/the company is reputable:eek:;

4) If you live in London it seems you're going to pay almost twice as much in premiums as others outside London (even other major cities are cheap by comparison):mad:;

5) Pass Plus (for young drivers) didn't make any difference with 90% of companies approached, and of those that it did their premiums were higher to begin with:mad:;

6) The insurance group categories are only guidelines as to what you might actually pay according to many stories I read and my own experience. Some people were saying that in some cases even moving to a car two insurance groups above their current group with newly-declared driving offences had not resulted in a significant increase in premiums (this was again primarily young/new drivers) so how are premiums being calculated initially? I have no idea.

7) The value of the car also didn't seem to affect the premiums by as much as I thought it would (an old £500 banger would cost as much to insure as a £2k+ car) so my Son got a better one out of me.:beer:;

8) Adding myself aged 44 with 6 years no claims bonus to the quotes made absolutely no difference in price in most case:ps;

9) Any slight modification of the car from standard made a HUGE difference, even things like alloy wheels and tinted windows counted!:mad:

In the end we went with ASDA (£2.5k!) and I must admit I was tempted to sign with Quinn out of spite as it felt like daylight robbery, but I'd rather he be safe than sorry should anything occur. Plus most of the other major name insurance companies offered similar prices to the ASDA deal, but ASDA's needed less tweaking of my Son's details to be accurate (which seemed to always result in larger premiums with the others) so that really was the best we could find after two months of searching for a car and my Son getting insurance quotes on 4 different models of that car, so we sort of knew what to expect.

Overall I felt it would be expensive to get him on the road (and we all know that's just the start of it!), but I was genuinely surprised at how much fluctuation there can be in the quotes received, and from what my Son tells me about his friends premiums it really can be a lottery for everyone with many factors coming in to play, so good luck and Merry Christmas to all!!