Cancellation of insurance after total loss

bigbars

DullGreyGuy said:

bigbars said:
For my friend as she pays monthly, hers was stopped and the remaining premium was taken out of the claim, another person got their premium back On a pro rata basis.

She doesn't pay for her insurance monthly, she is repaying the loan she took to pay her insurance. Insurers/premium credit houses have good leverage over customers to ensure they keep repaying their loan in that they can rapidly cancel the policy for non-payment which creates a lifetime of problems. If that leverage goes because the policy has ended suddenly people are less keen on repaying their loans hence the loan ends with the policy and the remaining debt taken from the premiums. 

I suspect your other friend was in a non-fault accident and therefore the third party insurer paid out for the total loss. They then are just cancelling their policy claim free hence would get a pro-rata refund. 

Thanks for explaining that. Pity Axa aren’t so forthcoming with information.

Dave_5150

elsien said:

Is there a question? 

This was it (I think) "is this normal insurance behaviour?"

Mildly_Miffed

bigbars said:

True, you could. But in amongst work and life, it’s not so easy to search, visit , test etc. weekdays for searching, where possible location and life dependent, weekends for viewing.

 my delay is I’m specific about what I want. I want the same as I had before. Yes I could get any one in 5 minutes but your car and house are your two biggest purchase in life, so don’t want to be rushed into it.

I was just curious as to whether it  is normal practice to cancel a policy. I paid my premium in full, so just expected it to continue, as when you test drive cars, in particular private ones, you must have car insurance in place. Surely if it’s cancelled I can’t test drive or even drive  a hire car?

Presumably you're filling the gap until you find that exact car with some form of transport.

Hire car? That's going to get expensive quickly. So buy a cheaper stopgap...

Friends had their near-new Audi A1 written off by somebody pulling out of a side road. They bought a £1k Suzuki Swift as a stopgap, then sold it again when they found a near-new Q2 to the spec they wanted.

Yes, many policies do cancel on a total-loss claim. This one's giving you the option to continue it with another car, but that option isn't open indefinitely. There's no refund, because the policy's already paid out in full for the loss.

If you need insurance to test-drive something being sold privately, then you can buy short-term cover, by the hour or day. Hire cars are insured by the hirer. Garage test-drives are under the garage's trade policy.

uknick

bigbars said:

True, you could. But in amongst work and life, it’s not so easy to search, visit , test etc. weekdays for searching, where possible location and life dependent, weekends for viewing.

 my delay is I’m specific about what I want. I want the same as I had before. Yes I could get any one in 5 minutes but your car and house are your two biggest purchase in life, so don’t want to be rushed into it.

I was just curious as to whether it  is normal practice to cancel a policy. I paid my premium in full, so just expected it to continue, as when you test drive cars, in particular private ones, you must have car insurance in place. Surely if it’s cancelled I can’t test drive or even drive  a hire car?

What policy do you think you'll have in place to test drive private sales?  Unless you have some sort of trade policy, the usual (but not always) clause is "driving other cars", but that is 3rd party cover only.  I'm not sure I'd let someone drive my car on 3rd party only.

Flugelhorn

bigbars said:

ontheroad1970 said:

bigbars said:

True, you could. But in amongst work and life, it’s not so easy to search, visit , test etc. weekdays for searching, where possible location and life dependent, weekends for viewing.

 my delay is I’m specific about what I want. I want the same as I had before. Yes I could get any one in 5 minutes but your car and house are your two biggest purchase in life, so don’t want to be rushed into it.

I was just curious as to whether it  is normal practice to cancel a policy. I paid my premium in full, so just expected it to continue, as when you test drive cars, in particular private ones, you must have car insurance in place. Surely if it’s cancelled I can’t test drive or even drive  a hire car?

When you test drive a car from a dealer, you are using their trader's insurance.  When you hire a car, it already has third party cover in place.

So test driving a private car or even driving someone else’s car?

if you test drive them from a garage  you are using the dealer's policy - they take details etc from you for their insurance company

driving someone else's car is not covered - gone are the days of "any driver" policies

for a private sale you are not covered at all unless you have a car insured and even then it is only 3rd party. If you are serious about test driving a car to buy from a private person then you can get very short tern insurance to cover the event. 

bigbars

Mildly_Miffed said:

bigbars said:

True, you could. But in amongst work and life, it’s not so easy to search, visit , test etc. weekdays for searching, where possible location and life dependent, weekends for viewing.

 my delay is I’m specific about what I want. I want the same as I had before. Yes I could get any one in 5 minutes but your car and house are your two biggest purchase in life, so don’t want to be rushed into it.

I was just curious as to whether it  is normal practice to cancel a policy. I paid my premium in full, so just expected it to continue, as when you test drive cars, in particular private ones, you must have car insurance in place. Surely if it’s cancelled I can’t test drive or even drive  a hire car?

Presumably you're filling the gap until you find that exact car with some form of transport.

Hire car? That's going to get expensive quickly. So buy a cheaper stopgap...

Friends had their near-new Audi A1 written off by somebody pulling out of a side road. They bought a £1k Suzuki Swift as a stopgap, then sold it again when they found a near-new Q2 to the spec they wanted.

Yes, many policies do cancel on a total-loss claim. This one's giving you the option to continue it with another car, but that option isn't open indefinitely. There's no refund, because the policy's already paid out in full for the loss.

If you need insurance to test-drive something being sold privately, then you can buy short-term cover, by the hour or day. Hire cars are insured by the hirer. Garage test-drives are under the garage's trade policy.

I was trying to be frugal. If I get like for like or similar then there is no extra admin charge to be had to my policy if updated through their portal. If I get higher performance or group I have to pay the difference but if I drop down I won’t get the difference as far as I understand it . 

Whilst the weather was favourable I was just getting used to biking around.

Gone are the days of picking up a banger for a few hundred. What I was trying to avoid was get a car to tied me over till I find the exact one I wanted then have to sell or px it… more money.

guess i better get a wriggle on, but it’s like buying a house, luck of the draw. If I didn’t have the particular one in mind it would be easier but I’m boring and fussy.

DullGreyGuy

bigbars said:

Mildly_Miffed said:

bigbars said:

True, you could. But in amongst work and life, it’s not so easy to search, visit , test etc. weekdays for searching, where possible location and life dependent, weekends for viewing.

 my delay is I’m specific about what I want. I want the same as I had before. Yes I could get any one in 5 minutes but your car and house are your two biggest purchase in life, so don’t want to be rushed into it.

I was just curious as to whether it  is normal practice to cancel a policy. I paid my premium in full, so just expected it to continue, as when you test drive cars, in particular private ones, you must have car insurance in place. Surely if it’s cancelled I can’t test drive or even drive  a hire car?

Presumably you're filling the gap until you find that exact car with some form of transport.

Hire car? That's going to get expensive quickly. So buy a cheaper stopgap...

Friends had their near-new Audi A1 written off by somebody pulling out of a side road. They bought a £1k Suzuki Swift as a stopgap, then sold it again when they found a near-new Q2 to the spec they wanted.

Yes, many policies do cancel on a total-loss claim. This one's giving you the option to continue it with another car, but that option isn't open indefinitely. There's no refund, because the policy's already paid out in full for the loss.

If you need insurance to test-drive something being sold privately, then you can buy short-term cover, by the hour or day. Hire cars are insured by the hirer. Garage test-drives are under the garage's trade policy.

I was trying to be frugal. If I get like for like or similar then there is no extra admin charge to be had to my policy if updated through their portal. If I get higher performance or group I have to pay the difference but if I drop down I won’t get the difference as far as I understand it.

How to be frugal may change when you realise you lose the rest of your policy if you dont have any vehicle to insure... depending on the numbers it may be cheaper to buy a basic vehicle and insure it then switch or may be cheaper to let the policy lapse and start again at a later date when you've got your next vehicle.

Dont get hung up on "performance" or "group", most insurers use neither of these but instead their claims experience with similar cars. As a result the type of person that owns certain vehicles can massively outweigh either of these factors. As evidence:

Owned - VW EOS TSI - Group 32 - 0-60 7.8s - value £7,500 - insurance £650
Considered - Mini Cooper S - Group 30 - 0-60 6.8 - value £25,000 - insurance £800
Bought - Mercedes SL500 - Group 50 - 0-60 4.2 - value £90,000 - insurance £725 (add a learner driver and it was £730)

By all odds the Mini should have been around the EOS price based on your idea of group and performance given it was slightly higher or lower depending on exact metric and the Mercedes being massively more expensive because of it being notably higher on both. In practice though the boy racer aspect of the Cooper S outweighs this