Temporary car insurance for 40 yr old son not able to quote "unacceptable use"

agnomen

We tried to add my partner's son to our car insurance for a few days while on holiday, not for business. He's didn't have any problems when he had a car. Company refused to quote as they said "Unacceptable Use", but said they couldn't explain what that meant. This doesn't make any sense. Has anyone come across this? 

Ayr_Rage

It means the risk falls outwith their parameters.

agnomen

Ayr_Rage said:

It means the risk falls outwith their parameters.

That could well be, but since the only cover we wanted was to drive the car for leisure, I can't figure out what those parameters might be. There's nothing that's obviously unusual/ risky about the driver. Ironically his job is to do with due diligence and risk evaluation.

CliveOfIndia

All insurers have different risk appetites and profiles.  Case in point, when my kids were learning to drive, some companies gave extortionate quotes for learners, others were very reasonable.  Same when my daughter passed her test just a few weeks ago - some companies refused to insure her, some quoted many thousands, in the end we found a pretty reasonable deal.

There's no point in trying to second-guess what their criteria are.  It's worth trying one of these temporary insurance companies - we've used DayInsure a few times when my son has wanted to borrow our car, always found them pretty reasonable.  (In my best BBC voice, "other temporary insurance companies are available").

DullGreyGuy

agnomen said:

We tried to add my partner's son to our car insurance for a few days while on holiday, not for business. He's didn't have any problems when he had a car. Company refused to quote as they said "Unacceptable Use", but said they couldn't explain what that meant. This doesn't make any sense. Has anyone come across this? 

So you tried to add them as a Temporary Additional Driver? Rather than trying to buy a Temp Insurance policy? Did you try adding them as a Named Driver instead of a TAD?

Not all insurers accept TAVs or if they do it may be highly limited. 

motorguy

agnomen said:

We tried to add my partner's son to our car insurance for a few days while on holiday, not for business. He's didn't have any problems when he had a car. Company refused to quote as they said "Unacceptable Use", but said they couldn't explain what that meant. This doesn't make any sense. Has anyone come across this? 

whilst i cant answer that question, you can get temporary insurance.  My son was home from Sydney for 3 weeks and i got him temporary insurance on my car for the three weeks.  Wasnt a fortune.   I think something like £160 for 3 weeks.  

agnomen

Thank you to all for your responses, which were helpful when re-contacting the insurers and provided some useful advice here for the future.
It turned out that my partner's insurance was for business cover and a social use add-on didn't compute.

This time we had an agent with a brain, who contacted the underwriters and sorted it all out (previous one just said 'computer says no'...). 
Week's cover now arranged!   

DullGreyGuy

agnomen said:

This time we had an agent with a brain, who contacted the underwriters and sorted it all out (previous one just said 'computer says no'...). 

In fairness to the agents... its a highly regulated industry and so rules are typically strict and call centres are the sweatshops of the western world where you have to hit your average handling times, wrap up times etc etc. Obviously there will always be some who dont fully comply, used to include me before I broke free from call centre life. 


A financial firm will either be advisory or non-advisory, in the former you must collect and store a load of data about the customer and the basis of why you advised they bought X. In non-advised world the customer has to decide what's right for them and the staff cannot give any advice in the sales process. Most consumer insurance is sold on a non-advised basis and most companies dont do any advised sales. 

As an example of why you get robotic staff... in a former employer we sold Motor on a non-advised basis. A customer phoned up saying they were thinking of treating themselves to a Ferrari F340 but wanted to know how much the insurance was going to be. The agent responded saying "wow, thats a great car". Audit listened to the call and the agent was summoned to a disciplinary hearing for having advised the customer that an F340 is a great car and had a formal warning placed on their record. Now when we heard about it we stepped in, had the represemand removed and argued F340 is a great car is a statement of fact not advice and wouldn't have influenced the sale of insurance. However, with that kind of atmosphere you can understand why agents are so robotic.