Car Insurance Renewal Timings

paxee

Hi folks - Given the advice from MSE to seek renewal 21-26 days ahead, I'm normally quite on the ball.  This year my insurer, was 2 weeks later than expected sending out the renewal quote - I had to ring them up to chase them and they were quite evasive about when it would be sent.  I'd looked back over previous years and they'd sent it out on the same date like clockwork before.  So a question - are companies getting wiser and leaving renewal details later to take you outside the 21-26 window?  And a reminder - keep a separate note of your renewal so you can get alternative notes and chase.

AdrianC

You do know you don't need to wait for your renewal to get quotes, right?

Ant555

paxee said:

So a question - are companies getting wiser and leaving renewal details later to take you outside the 21-26 window?  

My recent experience does not reflect this, a renewal reminder for end Feb was sent out in plenty of time.   This will be your first annual renewal where your particular insurers staff might be working from home, that may play a part in any delay to their normal timely procedure. 
Just out of interest, your post suggests that you have been with them for several years so their previous annual quotes must have been acceptable, have you done the comparisons this year yet and found them uncompetitive?

Sandtree

80% of customers just auto-renew each year and for those guys (remembering the regulatory requirement to provide reasonable notice) you want to be informing them as far in advance as possible so its put on the to do later pile as theres plenty of time and then it just slips through again unchallenged.

Trying to get more of the 20% that are shopping around to get worse prices by later notification is probably going to do more harm than good when you start getting more of the 80% looking with a notice thats due fairly soon.

bob_a_builder

Run the numbers on the comparison sites 21-26 days ahead 
Those quotes remain valid for 2 or 3 weeks (prob varies by site)  by which time your renewal will have turned up and you can choose who to go with

barnaclebill

My insurer sent my renewal quote a month before the date, it was a lot higher than expected but I allways check with other companies anyway, did not go for the lowest but the second lowest who had good service reviews, when I phoned my present insurer to tell them not to auto renew they were surprised that my quote from them had been so high and dropped theirs by £400 but still not as low as my new provider and I would not have accepted it anyway after they had tried it on like that.