Car insurance the day before delivery of vehicle

Savedotmoney

Can someone explain why insurance companies up their quotes when your insurance is due to start the next day? So if I did my insurance quote yesterday it was £30 cheaper than today when it's due for delivery tomorrow.

Crooks the lot of them. Surely regulation needs to stop these excessive charges? I can't complete my checkout online because the car dealer hasn't put my registration on the MIB yet so none of their systems recognise the new car.

daveyjp

Each time I have had an insurance quote it has been valid for 30 days, so did you not save it?

paddyandstumpy

Savedotmoney said:

Can someone explain why insurance companies up their quotes when your insurance is due to start the next day? So if I did my insurance quote yesterday it was £30 cheaper than today when it's due for delivery tomorrow.

Crooks the lot of them. Surely regulation needs to stop these excessive charges? I can't complete my checkout online because the car dealer hasn't put my registration on the MIB yet so none of their systems recognise the new car.

I think the OP is referring to amending the inception date of the quote before buying and it effecting the price quoted. 

Totally legitimate and a rating factor used by most insurers. Not sure how that makes them 'crooks' 🤷🏻‍♂️

Sandtree

Distress purchase, you dont have much time and so will be less price sensitive than someone who's quoting weeks before. Never seen the stats but maybe also they find a correlation that disorganized people doing everything last minute have worse claims experience too. 

Its exactly the same as why exchange rates at airport currency conversion are much worse than on the high street. 

dunstonh

Surely regulation needs to stop these excessive charges?

How and why is it excessive?

I can't complete my checkout online because the car dealer hasn't put my registration on the MIB yet so none of their systems recognise the new car.

You don't need a registration to insure a new car.   
I thought most car dealers gave 7 days free insurance nowadays to get around the issues of dealing with insurance at point of purchase.

 Surely regulation needs to stop these excessive charges? 

How is £30 for an amendment excessive?   And in a roundabout way, regulation has stopped excessive charges as the FOS has ruled on a number of cases and found that they are not excessive at that level.

[Deleted User]

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Aretnap

Savedotmoney said:

Can someone explain why insurance companies up their quotes when your insurance is due to start the next day?

Various reasons, including but not limited to:

(1) Simple market forces. People buying at the last minute are likely to be less fussy about price than those buying well in advance. And you offer your cheapest prices to people who are likely to be most price-sensitive. Same reason why flights are (or certainly used to be) cheaper if your dates include a Saturday night stay - leisure travellers are more price-sensitive than business travellers

(2) Fraud risk. If you have an accident, or if your car is stolen or catches fire, and you don't have insurance, you might be tempted to buy some cover for immediate start, then five minutes later phone up the insurance company and say "you'll never guess what's just happened". Depending on the circumstances, it might not be easy for the insurer to prove that your claim was fraudulent. The longer the gap between buying the policy and its commencement, the less likely it is that you're going to try something like this.

(Must say I was sorely tempted to try something similar when my car broke down round the corner from my house and I realised that my breakdown cover had lapsed. Buy AA membership, get the bus to work, call out the AA the next morning. I didn't do it in the end, but not everyone is as honest/chicken as me)

(3) Customer's general attitude to paperwork. If you're the sort of person who doesn't sort out your car insurance until the day before it's due (or worse still, he day after it's due) there's a fair chance that you're also the sort of person who takes three days to phone your insurer and tell them that you've been in an accident. And there's little insurers hate more than people who take three days yo tell them that they've been in an accident; it means that they don't have chance to contact the third party and offer to sort out his repairs and a hire car themselves rather than having him go to an accident management company who will massively inflate the costs of the claim.

(4) Customer's general personality type. If you're the sort of person who sorts out your car insurance a month in advance then you're obviously a well organised, forward thinking person - perhaps that's reflected in your driving style too?

There are probably others, but that seems like enough to be going on with.