Car Insurance Rip Offs (Many)

AndyS61

Hi MSE
I’ve just gone through the annual car renewal pain, as usual the renewal offer on the current car insurance was more than 30% higher (50% on my wife’s policy)
What irked me was when I contacted my insurer they told they they could see I’d been looking for policies on Compare websites! Surely this is a breach of the Data Protection act?
Also once again a “No Fault” accident on my previous car 4 years ago puts my policy up by £100, why when there was no claim on my policy and the Third Party’s Insurance paid in full after the other driver admitted 100% blame? Why through no fault of my own (Surely the definition of “No Fault) does this affect future Car Insurance policies? Do I have grounds to claim the additional cost of premiums from the third party insurer?
Yours Not Happy

la531983

AndyS61 said:

Hi MSE
I’ve just gone through the annual car renewal pain, as usual the renewal offer on the current car insurance was more than 30% higher (50% on my wife’s policy)
What irked me was when I contacted my insurer they told they they could see I’d been looking for policies on Compare websites! Surely this is a breach of the Data Protection act?

You clearly didnt read the terms and conditions on the comparison sites, did you?

How do you expect companies to be able to give you quotes unless they send your data to the insurers?

wongataa

AndyS61 said:

Also once again a “No Fault” accident on my previous car 4 years ago puts my policy up by £100, why when there was no claim on my policy and the Third Party’s Insurance paid in full after the other driver admitted 100% blame? Why through no fault of my own (Surely the definition of “No Fault) does this affect future Car Insurance policies? Do I have grounds to claim the additional cost of premiums from the third party insurer?
Yours Not Happy

The very act of being involved in an incident changes your risk profile irregardless of whether you claimed or not or whether you caused the incident. Fault in car insurance terms means your insurance company had to pay out.  If you made a claim over something that you didn't cause but your insurance company could not recover the losses from anyone else it is a fault claim.  This is nothing new.

As insurers only tend to ask for details of incidents whether you claimed or not going back 5 years it will drop off soon.

DullGreyGuy

How do you think price comparison sites work? They gather the details from you, they then send them to the 100+ companies that offer quotes for Motor. Those companies then work out what premium they would charge, if they're interested, and send that plus a quote reference back to the aggregator who displays the results to you. By using the site you have to agree to your details being shared else they cannot get any quotes for you. 

If you then phone one of the companies that are on the aggregator they can naturally see the quote they generated. Many companies operate under multiple brands so UK Insurance as a legal entity provides quotes for Churchill, Privilege etc via aggregators but their Direct Line brand doesn't but if you call Direct Line you are still talking to a representative of UK Insurance and they can potentially see the quotes done under the other brands they operate. 

Mass market consumer insurance is based on statistical analysis. Analysis shows that those that have made a non-fault claim are x% more likely to make another claim compared to someone who has made no claims at all. You can try and apply logic to it, insurers don't, like you park in a crappy carpark every Sunday, last time you were lucky and someone left their details but next time they may be a hit and run. 

In principle it would be an uninsured loss you could recover from the at fault party if you can get evidence that it is the cause of the price difference. £100 after 4 years is a very high impact unless you have a mid four figure premium; its more than the impact of our fault claim was. 

400ixl

How do you think the comparison sites get their prices to show you? The either screen scrape the insurers site or use API's they have created to allow them to create quotes as if you had gone there yourself along with any affiliate details they have. From that they will know the names and addresses of all the people who are using the sites, and can easily match that to their databases. They will only know the prices they have returned, they won't know what the other insurers responded with, but may get back ranking data which is likely aggregated.

You will have agreed to this in the T&C's so there is no data protection breach.

As for the non fault claim, All no fault means is that your insurer either recovered its costs or did not have to pay anything out. Statistically, if you are involved in an accident, you are likely to be again, it will depend on the type of accident as to what affect that has on your profile. Insurance is a risk business and you have a different risk profile to someone without any claims, same as you have a different risk profile to someone who has an at fault claim.

Yes, in theory you could go after the 3rd party for future losses, not the easiest thing to quantify or recover, but you are entitled to should you wish.

Unfortunately the costs the insurers have to bear have gone up, so they have to put their prices up. General insurance is a very low margin business, loss leading for some.

You could put some of the blame at the door of the insured in some cases. The use or accident claims companies and credit hire vehicles has made the costs explode in recent years, this is following in peoples claims for injuries which haven't really caused a loss for most people. Did you use any of these services when you claimed against the 3rd party?

Nasqueron

On your no-fault claim - just as an example, say you lived on a long straight road and a load of boy racers decided to street cruise on it and one crashed into your car and stuck around to give you the insurance details. While your insurer got the money back from them, that flags to your insurance that you live in an area where boy racers drive dangerously so it's more likely that you will be hit again than your neighbour behind you who is on a side road. 

That's just how the algorithms work

Goudy

400ixl said:

You could put some of the blame at the door of the insured in some cases. 

And the uninsured.
A percentage of your premium goes to the MIB to cover at fault uninsured drivers.

The MIB should then pursue the uninsured driver for costs, but I guess that's like milking a rock at times, even if they do manage to get identified.

And don't forget the insurance premium tax, there's 12% straight off the bat.

Bigphil1474

OP, to be honest, 30% is good this year. Mine went up 57% a couple of weeks ago on renewal and they were the cheapest acceptable one I could find by a good few quid. Not had any claim of any sort since 2003.