Car Insurance - What is my occupation

jgh

I bought a new (secondhand) car last month, and went online (to the AA) to get insurance cover. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of occupations listed I couldn't find anything to fit.

My usual job title is "IT Field Engineer". Nothing close to that. IT Consultant? What's that? Technician? errr?

What I do is go out to sites where somebody has said "I've poured coffee into my printer, wah wah" and take their old kit away, plonk new stuff on their desk, connect it up, configure it, test it. etc. I go to shops and replace their electronic point-of-sales terminals. I go to offices and sit their as staff come to me to have their laptop software upgraded. I go to sites and do the upgrades on site. I also do software development on the side, and am also a parish councillor.

I've gone through the list at insurance/car-insurance-job-picker/ and nothing matches.

As per the quiz show, What's My Occupation?

elsien

Just pick whatever you feel comes closest. My job  is never on any of the insurance lists so now I just put charity worker. 

ontheroad1970

That works until you need to make a claim and the insurance co needs a way of not paying the claim, with a bonus serving of a cancellation that has no time limit on requirements to be declared

elsien

I have made a claim, and had no issues.
And what do you expect people to do where their job title isn’t on the list? 

 I did actually phone one of them up to say that my job title didn’t exist, and that was the advice I was given at the time. 

It is not a lie, I do work for a charity.

I would imagine in the same way the OP could pick something similar IT related or something similar engineer related. With the option to phone and ask if they want to be on the safe side. 

mebu60

Computer Technician is on the MSE list. Would that work for you if on the AA list too? 

Jemma01

jgh said:

 somebody has said "I've poured coffee into my printer, wah wah" 

 😆😆😆 Bless your soul. Insurance don't ask questions out of thin air. Some occupations may be flagged as higher risk like taxi drivers. So I'd pick the closest, IT consultant sounds fine. Your job sounds like you're on the road often, which in theory could increase your risk profile. An IT consultant could be on their desk all day and not on site. 

sheramber

Field engineer should cover it.

Does it matter if it IT /computers or something else?

john1

Legal and General have some guidence here 

jgh

Thanks for the suggestions.

My job title, what it says on my badge, what it said on the job advert, is "IT Field Engineer".

From my perspective, what I *do* is "technician". There's no engineering involved. In fact, it's barely above "fitter".

"I deliver your piano, I don't play the piano, I don't teach how to play the piano, and I don't write piano music".

The sheer number of times the people on site expect me to tell them how to use the damn stuff I install for them. *I* don't know! *YOU'RE* the sales clerk that uses the damn thing, not me! I just plug the damn thing in and take the old one away. (It was even worse when I was doing this for the NHS. How on earth do they expect a delivery chap to know how to use a clinical systems prescribing system, and worse, teach them how to use it?)

Anyway, I think the closest I can get to is "Computer Technician", so I'll go online and update my insurance details to that.

Thanks everybody.

Grey_Critic

The real problem is the job description. Some can trigger consequences - If you were to claim you were a F1 driver even if you drive a Fiesta 950 POP and you only use it to take your granny to church it would load your premium - and that is assuming they would actually insure you. It is how they interpret it - when I ran car hire I had a list of restricted occupations - as mundane as possible is the answer.

Ectophile

Do people admit that they have tipped coffee in the printer?

I thought it was usually "your stupid printer has gone wrong and I'm working on something really important.  Send someone immediately to come and fix it."