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

midimanuser

Aretnap said:

midimanuser said:

Aretnap said:

midimanuser said:

The max discount they give is 24%. So in theory all of these insurance companies have been erroding my NCDs for years and they practically amount to nothing. 

A meager £300 off for 9 years NCD. That's about £33 for every year of NCD they take into effect as they disregard anything above that.

This is a Good Thing.

Obviously there's a maximum number of years insurers will take into account at all. They don't care whether your 17 year old self had an accident 20 years ago or not - why would they? I'm a very different person to my 17 year old self and I'm sure that you are too.

Plus if insurers did give you credit for decades and decades of "hard graft and safe driving" (most of us just call it "owning a car"), the flip side would be that if you'd had an accident on the way to an Oasis gig, you'd still have to declare it, and pay extra as a result, a couple of decades later. Plenty of people would see that as an outrage as well.

In any event as had already been mentioned, the notion that NCB represents a "discount" in any meaningful sense of the word has always been a fiction. The large majority of people have full NCB, so what you get with full NCB is really the standard price. By "eroding your NCDs to practically nothing" all they're actually doing is penalising people less heavily for having had accidents, or for having little driving history. Or indeed for having not insured a car of their own for the last couple of years.

I'm not really sure what you're angry about now -the fact that the thing they've so wantonly and unfairly taken away turned out not to have been worth all that much after all? Or just the fact that you're not being penalised enough for not having and various NCB?

midimanuser said:

So now I have two options. 
1. Pay the extra £300 and lose my 16yrs NCB. 
2. Purchase a bargain car and insure it for as little as possible with someone that gives 3 years grace. 

Going to the expense of buying and insuring another car just to save (less than) £300 on next year's insurance bill seems a little drastic, but if preserving your NCD is really a hill that you want to die on then go right ahead.

Or you mention sharing a car - if that means sharing with your spouse or partner you could always insure your partner's car with someone who will recognise for up to 3 years. Then your NCB will be available to use on your own car again in a year's time. Alternating the policyholder every year is the standard way to keep two NCBs going when you're temporarily a one car family. 

Or you could always just shrug and get on with life.

You say all it might save me is £300. 
But it it will cost me £300 the next so on without it. 
Say £1500 in 5 years. 

It certainly won't cost you £300 every year going forward, because you'll be building it up again, and as you can see from the table I posted above the bulk of the discount comes in the first couple of years or so anyway.

So you'll have maybe a 20% discount with 1 year's NCD - which means only a £100 extra cost next year. Then maybe £50 the year after. In 5 years time the difference between 5 years and twenty-something years NCD will likely be a rounding error on your premium. 

midimanuser said:

The cars insurance that I am sharing doesn't run out until next March. So I can't put myself as a main driver on that with anyone else and my 3 years would have run out by then. 

If you're really desperate you could always look into cancelling the current policy on the car that you've been sharing and insuring it yourself from now. There'll be a cancellation fee to pay - but balance that against the savings from preserving your NCD. 

It's who the policyholder is who matters from an NCD perspective by the way - the main driver and the policyholder are not necessarily the same person.

Hi yes, 
This is a total mind field and I kind of feel that my insurers feel for me as the manager has tried to offer me some assistance even if it means them losing me as they must know that the underwriters rules are not fair. 
Look at the measures that were put in place to help renters during Covid to prevent them from falling into difficulties

Why should others and myself been expected to tax and insure vehicles when we were forced to work at home, and then only allowed back to work once it was deemed safe. 

I have never had a lapse in insurance but this was extenuating circumstances. 
And I have been driving, and insured most of the time where possible during those 2.4 years. 
Gaining 2 years NCD on a van too. 

I can pay the extra £300 and be done with it but it means that I lose my 16yrs NCD and end up giving over the odds to someone that really doesn't deserve my money for what has been nothing in return in 30 years of driving. 

DullGreyGuy

tifo said:

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.

Well, that was the other silliness of it... one of our competitors made a big thing about recognising up to 9 years NCD and at that level they gave a 70% discount but we maxed out at 5 years but gave a 75% for that. 

Many are still giving 60-75% discounts for max NCD but the insurance is priced for the discount and so they aren't cheaper than those only offering a 30% Max NCD, the difference comes to the low NCD holders who are more expensive with these providers instead. 

WellKnownSid

midimanuser said:

Why should others and myself been expected to tax and insure vehicles when we were forced to work at home, and then only allowed back to work once it was deemed safe. 

Nobody actually forced you to do anything.  If you wanted to go back to the office sooner, you could have changed jobs - I went the other way - our company was forcing everyone back to work in an 'Elon Musk' kind of memo, so I changed to a company that's permanent WFH.  Life is a set of choices, we are all responsible for our decisions - otherwise that would make us irresponsible.

But as I say, you've probably saved yourself £15,000 and it might cost you £1,000 over the next five years to put it right.  Look on the bright side!

sheramber

If you if you were forced to work from home we’re you not paid?

Barkin

Mr.Generous said:

Out of interest what car costs £1300 to insure? My car is group 29 and costs about £250 on a multi car with wife's car for just over £400)

It's car insurance - there's no logic to it. 
My car's group 36 or so, and last renewal a couple of weeks ago was the first time it's cost me over 200 quid.