Car Insurer Not Recognising My NCD After 2 years This is criminal.

midimanuser

WellKnownSid said:

Flugelhorn said:

midimanuser said:

prowla said:

Funnily enough I had a discussion with someone today and said that ISTR the NCD expires after 2 years.

This would not be an issue under normal circumstances but Covid and Lockdown forced most people to either SORN their vehicles or sell them until they knew more about their travelling situation. 

Now I am being punished by the insurers for essentially not paying them to have a car sitting around. 

I wouldn't say MOST people - SORNed or sold their vehicles. most carried on with what they had - Lockdown was actually only a few months at a  time and not years in a block. Many did lots of travelling, work, moving house, kids back from Uni, driving lessons etc etc within a few months of the start of it all 

Agreed.  I made the bold decision to carry on eating during lockdown.  As I recall, supermarket doorstep deliveries were very much a fictional part of the Government's plan to feed the nation, so we definitely needed a car for that bit.

Agreed.  I made the bold decision to carry on eating during lockdown.  As I recall, supermarket doorstep deliveries were very much a fictional part of the Government's plan to feed the nation, so we definitely needed a car for that bit.

I don't know where you lived but we couldn't afford or justify keeping two cars sitting on the drive, taxed and insured doing nothing. 

We had only just bought a £30K car to then then find out a few months later that we were probably not going to need it, or would be putting less than 2000 miles a year on it for the foreseeable future. Because of Covid and how our working arrangements changed in a flash.  

Where before it would have done around 9000 - 12000 miles a year with commuting and social travel.

So it made sense to sell one of the vehicles and car share until we knew more about work, and finances. 

Flugelhorn

I hope the same set of circumstances never occur again @midimanuser but worth considering who in the family insures the car and if you are genuinely sharing the car  then alternating the insuring driver each year, I known plenty of people who keep NCD ticking along by doing this. 

Appreciate lockdown hit people differently but we kept our three ticking along (one for a learner) , knowing that we would do a fair bit of mileage within the year one way or another and that replacing them would be more of a hassle in the future

sheramber

Some companies will  give a named driver some NCB if they take out their own insurance with them.

Stateofart

Same as company cars.  Come out of the scheme and you can no longer use your old NCB in some cases.

midimanuser

Stateofart said:

Same as company cars.  Come out of the scheme and you can no longer use your old NCB in some cases.

Yes that is bad too. 
Why should you lose your NCD that took years to build up and probably cost you £1000's to get just because you have not been on a main driver on an active policy. 

I agree that you should not get them unless you are the main driver, but you should not lose them for not having your own policy. Especially if you can prove that you have been actively driving during the elapsed time frame.  

cajef

WellKnownSid said:

Flugelhorn said:

midimanuser said:

prowla said:

Funnily enough I had a discussion with someone today and said that ISTR the NCD expires after 2 years.

This would not be an issue under normal circumstances but Covid and Lockdown forced most people to either SORN their vehicles or sell them until they knew more about their travelling situation. 

Now I am being punished by the insurers for essentially not paying them to have a car sitting around. 

I wouldn't say MOST people - SORNed or sold their vehicles. most carried on with what they had - Lockdown was actually only a few months at a  time and not years in a block. Many did lots of travelling, work, moving house, kids back from Uni, driving lessons etc etc within a few months of the start of it all 

Agreed.  I made the bold decision to carry on eating during lockdown.  As I recall, supermarket doorstep deliveries were very much a fictional part of the Government's plan to feed the nation, so we definitely needed a car for that bit.

Being in the extremely vunerable classification I never had a problem with Tesco doing doorstep deliveries for several months during lockdown. 

DullGreyGuy

Nothing about NCD makes any sense... why can you use it only on one vehicle at a time? Why is it only the policyholder that has it? Why does it matter the class of vehicle? Why do some claims impact it but not others? How can you insurer your insurance with NCDP?

Ultimately it a marketing gimmick, something like 80% of policyholders have max NCD, and over the years what discount it represents has eroded massively. As long as your history is clean many insurers will be heavily discounting anyway almost as if you had at least a basic NCD anyway. 

In Motor the rules are relatively consistent between insurers, unlike Home, but there are still notable differences. Its almost universal that after 2 years NCD is considered dead but there are always one or two that accept 3 years (Admiral being the most notable player today as already noted) and sometimes agents will give special dispensation for allowing it (though more commonly in cases of widow(er)s "inheriting" their former spouses than financial driven).

Certainly shop around though, it can be false economy to pay an insurer £1,000 premium because they'll recognise your three year old NCD than go to a different insurer with no NCD but only pay £300 premium.

WellKnownSid

OP, it sounds like you jumped ship far too early based upon a brief period of lockdown.

On the plus side, you saved on running a £30,000 car for 2.5 years - so that's what £300 a month plus car tax plus insurance plus servicing - so potentially getting on for £15,000 in vehicle costs.

Even a £300 'premium' per year - over the next nine years - to 'recover' your NCD position seems to be nowhere near as expensive.  Even doubling this figure leaves you £10,000 better off overall.

Or have I missed something?

Aretnap

DullGreyGuy said:

Nothing about NCD makes any sense... why can you use it only on one vehicle at a time? Why is it only the policyholder that has it? Why does it matter the class of vehicle? Why do some claims impact it but not others? How can you insurer your insurance with NCDP?

Many of those oddities do make more sense when you think of NCD as a renewal/loyalty discount that got out of hand rather than as something that was ever designed to work the way it does. Eg complaining that you can only use your NCD on one car at once is a bit like getting one of those "£10 off your next shop" vouchers from Tesco, then complaining that you can't use it three times at three different supermarkets. Complaining that your NCD expires after two years is analogous to complaining that your voucher has an expiry date. And why does only the policyholder get it? Well why does the person who does the shopping get the Clubcard points? Shouldn't it be the person who actually eats the food?

Agree that the way it's ended up working is silly. Probably it would be best if insurers scrapped it altogether. Problem is that there are a lot of people who see their NCD as (a) a basic human right and (b) the most valuable thing that they'll ever own (you can even buy insurance for it!) so the first insurer to scrap it would immediately lose all their business. It would probably make a decent case study for an economics class on how circumstances can conspire to make markets work inefficiently.

DullGreyGuy said:

and over the years what discount it represents has eroded massively. As long as your history is clean many insurers will be heavily discounting anyway almost as if you had at least a basic NCD anyway. 

That's probably the next best thing to scrapping it altogether. I found these numbers from Aviva on a quick search



If Aviva's numbers are at all typical then far from having to spend eighteen years and thousands of pounds just to get back to where he was, the OP may well find that next year he is already most of the way back to where he was, and that the difference between one year and 18 years NCD is pretty small. Meanwhile he's saved himself the costs of running, maintaining, taxing and insuring a car entirely for the last two and a half years, so overall I'd say he's still well ahead as a result.

tifo

Aretnap said:

If Aviva's numbers are at all typical then far from having to spend eighteen years and thousands of pounds just to get back to where he was, the OP may well find that next year he is already most of the way back to where he was, and that the difference between one year and 18 years NCD is pretty small. Meanwhile he's saved himself the costs of running, maintaining, taxing and insuring a car entirely for the last two and a half years, so overall I'd say he's still well ahead as a result.

I remember the days when 9 years NCD was marketed as "up to 75% discount". Not these days.