Car Insurance Tips & Tricks

System

???One trick I have heard of to reduce car premiums for prospective new drivers is to take out insurance for a moped or scooter when 16, even if you have not quite bought it yet!!!!! Then when you are old enough to drive a car at 17 you will already have some no claims bonus. The cost of the moped insurance can be considerably less than the savings of your no claims discount on car insurance.

lisyloo

I didn't think that no claims on bike insurance could be used for cars.
I certainly been told that in the past.

Has anyone done this recently?

System

Dirty trick for insuring older cars and vehicles with lower market value, basically anything you would normally insure under Third Party Only:

Find a company that offers DOC extension to basic policy. DOC stands for "Drive Other Cars", it's a clause to normal policy which extends the third party cover for you to drive any other car that is not owned, registered, or being hired to you.

In practice what it means is that you get insurance (and DOC extension) for Insurance Group 1 dirt cheap Fiat Panda and drive Insurance Group 16 class car, be it 2.6 litre Ford Mondeo Ghia X or BMW Z3 Convertible as long as the car you drive is owned by your wife (and vice versa) and you're fine with the fact the car is covered TPO.

Obviously it would be insane to use it for new cars but if you drive a car like Mondeo, big Citroen, Cavalier or any vehicle with sky high depreciation and market value lower than accident repair costs (especially in urban areas with risk zone factor 5 or 6) then £1,500 quote could suddenly become £400, all legal and in accordance with terms and conditions...

ikr2

I have a tip for saving money but only if you pay in monthly instalments.

Most insurers charge an APR if you pay them monthly rather than annually. Check the APR for this - they could be ripping you off! We checked our two companies last May when renewal was due and found the APR was 18% and 10% respectively!

So we paid them in a lump sum from a credit card (in this case Smile at 9.9%). That saved is £40 on two policies that cost us £900 between them.

I was then lucky enough to get the 0% Barclaycard and transferred this balance across. This means I now save £130 compared to if I'd paid monthly direct to the insurerers.

You do have to be disciplined and pay off the card within 1 year but we just pay the same payments by Standing Order to Barclays and are looking forward to clearing the balance a month early in April - leaving us with an extra £130 to spend/save during that month!

Ian Ridley

MSE_Martin

Ian, thats a superb trick, and one I should have thought of. (all the best ones are obvious once you think of them). Ut hmmm...... it may just appear ini my book

ikr2

Ian, thats a superb trick, and one I should have thought of. (all the best ones are obvious once you think of them).  Ut hmmm...... it may just appear ini my book  ;)

Of course it's better if you can afford to pay the premium in one go without borrowing on a credit card.

If you do follow my idea you can shuffle the balance to 0% introductory offer cards or one with a low rate for life for balance transfers. This will be almost as good as the Barclay card offer.

A few things I'm not sure about:

• I pay my House insurance in instalments too but am not sure if there is an APR associated with this.
• Does the consumer lose out by paying the premium in one go if they want to amend/cancel the policy? (I don't think so but people thinking of saving money this way should perhaps check)

Ian

payless

One very large insurer dropped interest for monthly payments - they now add what they call an admin fee
strangely from the renewals (i'm a broker) I see this admin fee varies - directly in relation to the the premium-
I calculate at a rate similiar to 12% APR
- but of course they don't quote an APR as its a admin fee.

Some comanies don't charge extra for monthly premiums (although you could say they don't offer discount for annual)

CARE some brokers now selling home & car insurance on annual basis - funded by credit finance (effectively a loan) - some cases the interest charged is higher than that offered by the insurers own monthly plan!!!

I prefer monthly (if no extra cost) for my clients as usually if no claim  that year the company will not charge any penalty (you just cancel DD) rather than trying to get a rebate from the insurer   -

I advise on home insurance - rather than motor  - but
I believe that in the Motor Ins world the rebates on a cancelled policy are less if its the first year you have been insured with them.

System

My car insurance is up for renewal and I’ve been shopping around. During the year we had 2 incidents where our car was damaged but we weren’t driving it at the time. The first was caused when nieghbour left his handbrake off and his car rolled into our garage door pushing it into the car inside – this was fully reclaimed from his insurer we didn’t even have to find and reclaim the excess. The second incident was caused by a kid on a pushbike crashing into the car on our drive, we had to pay excess (the claim was nearly £1000!) but we have protected no claims.



When entering quote details on Elephant I put one incident under my name and one under my wife’s (second named driver and a housewife). My wife also has a speeding conviction. Not happy with the initial quote of £862 I put all incidents under my wife’s name and the premium reduced to £768. Since no driver was involved in either indecent I assume that this is acceptable.



Does this make sense?

jimbob_3

i have a number of tax exempt cars (ie pre 1972) that i drive regularly. Mostly these have been insured at the most basic level through Tesco's but i now want to move to fully comp - trouble is that i cant find any way to either find all the companies that offer classic car insurance, or to compare the quotes

does anybody know of any good websites out there that will do this or can recommend a particular company?

System

Saga claim to be giving us over 50s a good deal with everything they try to get us to buy from them. After paying in instalments a premium of £470 (AXA - a rubbish bunch if ever there were), I've now got (thanks to MSE) a quote for £295 with Direct Choice (Equity Red Star). OK I take on the risk of a double excess (£300) but I think it's worth it.