Admiral/Bell car insurance - are terrible reviews always reason to avoid

nadsat

I'm shopping around for the renewal on my son's car insurance and the renewal from Hastings, which have always been cheapest, is now over £900 as he moved to Birmingham from Preston (the only reason for a £400 hike I can fathom although I dare say I can bargain them down as usual). 

The Bell and Admiral telematics policies start at £430 so look attractive and he is mainly a low milage driver at present in a training job. But these two, which are both Admiral, get the worst reviews on Trustpilot I've seen from any company. 

Non-telematics Admiral is £600 and a bit more are Elephant and Diamond, and surprisingly Ford Insure (EDIT: just seen this is run by Admiral...). 

Any views on Bell/Admiral? My main concern is not making a claim but them finding ways to cancel or rack up rates with the telematics box. The car is only worth about £500.

SaverRate

Not had telematics experience but I and other family members have been with Admiral (including Diamond and Ford insure) for a few years now for both car and home insurance including making claims with them. Never had an issue with them and a claim (write off) from start to finish (payout) was just over 7 days. (I did chase them thoughout this tho so this may have helped!) Always found it easy to contact them via live chat or phone if needed. 

EDIT - Ford Insure doesn't have a live chat function. 

Sandtree

Never had a telematics product but had insurance with them for several years and made one claim which was painless enough (though in part my choice of garage helped as Admiral themselves proposed it would be more difficult with my own garage but they advised they knew the Admiral regional engineer and would short cut the process).

The main issue with them was the length of time to get through to them on the phone but that charge can be levelled at lots of insurers.

Admiral Group do have a different approach to optional extras fitted to cars than the industry norm though in that factory fitted options (metallic paint, leather seats, alloys etc) all have to be declared and wont be covered. The later wont be an issue on a £500 car but you've presumably not had it from new and so knowing what is an optional extra and what was standard for the variant can be challenging. 

nadsat

Sandtree said:

Admiral Group do have a different approach to optional extras fitted to cars than the industry norm though in that factory fitted options (metallic paint, leather seats, alloys etc) all have to be declared and wont be covered. 

Does that mean they disallow a claim when they discover an extra or do they just not cover the extra. The car is a 2008 1.4 litre petrol Kia Rio - looks bog standard to me although it does have a (non-working) aircon. 

TELLIT01

nadsat said:

Sandtree said:

Admiral Group do have a different approach to optional extras fitted to cars than the industry norm though in that factory fitted options (metallic paint, leather seats, alloys etc) all have to be declared and wont be covered. 

Does that mean they disallow a claim when they discover an extra or do they just not cover the extra. The car is a 2008 1.4 litre petrol Kia Rio - looks bog standard to me although it does have a (non-working) aircon. 

I don't know about Admiral, but I have read of insurers refusing to pay out if ANY extras have been added and the insurer not informed.  This doesn't just apply to anything which affects handling or performance.  Items such as sill kick plates would be classed as non-standard.

Sandtree

nadsat said:

Sandtree said:

Admiral Group do have a different approach to optional extras fitted to cars than the industry norm though in that factory fitted options (metallic paint, leather seats, alloys etc) all have to be declared and wont be covered. 

Does that mean they disallow a claim when they discover an extra or do they just not cover the extra. The car is a 2008 1.4 litre petrol Kia Rio - looks bog standard to me although it does have a (non-working) aircon. 

The rules on what happens if you make a false declaration when buying insurance (eg my car has no modifications) are covered by the CIDRA legislation and it depends on if you did know, or reasonably should have, and intentionally or recklessly made the false representation.

If its considered a intentional or reckless issue then they can void the policy, if its deemed you possibly should have known but its falling into a grey area then they can reduce any claim by the percentage of premium difference a true declaration would make (ie declaring lowered suspension would have been a 10% premium increase they only have to settle 90% of the claim). If its perfectly reasonable that a person would think there is no modifications etc then the ombudsman will often require they pay the claim in full (or sometimes will enforce the discount).

With Admiral, even if you declared it had an optional upgrade of AC and paid an additional premium then they wouldn't cover the AC - They never pay for anything other than the standard Make/Model/Variant

Ditzy_Mitzy

I had a Bell policy for years, conventional rather than black box as those things didn't exist at the time and one wouldn't have been wanted anyway.  They were fine as an insurer; customer service was good from the Welsh call centre and the one claim I made was trouble free.  Courtesy car was provided without a hiccup and I actually ended up with more than I paid for the car in settlement; the claim was a total loss.  
I only left Bell because they unreasonably hiked my renewal premium one year; it went up by about £400 when it should have gone down.