Cut Your Car Insurance In 4 Steps Discussion Area

BusterB_2

Having become a real fan of MSE after finally developing the sense to move to 0% credit card I thought it time to check out the car insurance saving option.

Got quote from existing insurer Frizzell for £495 (wife as main driver). They also sent me a quote for £401, guess which is the most popular. However, following Martin's musings I thought we could probably do better and have. The best quote from confused.com is £270 with 'More than'- now that is significant. However, having accepted the quote and tried to buy I come upon information on screen that makes the assumption that I am an existing policy holder. I phone them to explain that my wife is the policy holder, to be told that as I have not held a policy in the last six months they would only insure me at 0% no claims bonus!!! What's that about? Not acceptable at all.

As it happens at renewal time last year I was in Baghdad and didn't have a lot of time to think about car insurance. My wife joined CSMA as they give a discounted insurance through Frizzell however she wasn't allowed to open it in my name as I wasn't available to speak on the telephone. (Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of thing that those of us in HM services have to get used to. Believe me it would take a new thread to explain). Anyway despite being a main driver forever I became a named driver. Did I care, well not really. Until today that is cos there has clearly been a knock on effect.

So the lady at More-than put me through to Hastings direct where having quickly taken details gave me quote of £297 less a £25 discount if I open it today. I'll take it. This has now taken hours however I'm not thwarted I'm off to find a breakdown policy.

The savings are out there. Keep searching.

Motu_2

I got a renewal quote from the AA of £465, went online and got a quote from the AA site with the same insurer as new business and it was £85 cheaper, exactly the same insurance,brilliant

thebellydancer

i have just renewed my car insurance with Privilege.com - the advert in the cafe with Joanna Lumley - they guarantee to beat any quote before the 31 July AND you can pay in instalments for 0% !!!!! Also backed by Direct Line so pretty safe I would say.

richards_ios

:T Just been busy trawling for cheap insurance for my old banger! Heard about the screen scrapers on Radio 2 but couldn't remember their names so after lots of typing of my details I finally remembered and one last attempt with Confused brought back a nice £50 discount! Hurrah!

I have found a cheap quote with Diamond, just have to see if I can haggle with my current broker to see if I can top that.

A fantastic time saver

Cheers Martin :beer:

rdwarr

thebellydancer wrote:

i have just renewed my car insurance with Privilege.com - the advert in the cafe with Joanna Lumley - they guarantee to beat any quote before the 31 July AND you can pay in instalments for 0% !!!!! Also backed by Direct Line so pretty safe I would say.

I tried that last time my renewal came up. I had the renewal quote from Tesco at £356 and the cheapest Privilege could do was £472! I mentioned the "guarantee" but all the guy came back with was "sorry". :rotfl:
(Male, 44, Full NCB, Group 18 Fully Comp)

By the way, savings you make by saying the main driver is somebody else (like your wife) shouldn't count here. That's just fraud and, if it comes to the crunch, you'll find you're not insured at all. You can't build up NCB either.

shorrocks

Great article, but beware of MoreThan. Both my wife and I took out seperate policies via their website following best quotes. We also elected for a one off payment to save even more money. However, we have since discovered that if we change the policy (eg sell the car, so stop the policy in favour of reinsuring a new car with MoreThan), they charge a £55 admin fee on the old policy, but won't credit the new policy. If you've any credit left on the old policy worth less than £55 you won't get it back even if you're taking out a new policy. This is in their small print, although ambiguous, and is a rip off. We've both complained but they're stonewalling and pointing to the small print. We won't be reinsuring with them when the current policies expire.

mdrhearn

I used insure supermarket and found that easy.com is the cheapest - Admiral wanted £200 for my wife's 97 coras, whilst easy want £110 - anyone had any dealings? Im not too happy with the 60p Minute phone service - any thoughts greatly received.

Mart

Jim_Mc

My car insurance was up for renewal so I looked on many sites including "Confused.com". When I got my quote for this year from my current company "More Than" it was for £186.38, I went on to there web site as a new coustermer and got it for £117.60 for the same policy. This was way cheeper than anything Confused.com could offer me, Try it out it may help.

chillipepper_3

Anyone wanting to save money on car insurance surely should try the offer ran by halifax, I've posted the link ion this thread (a few pages back) already or you can find the thread in the regular competitions board. It appears that the free daily draw for car insurance for £1 is now being offered as an alternative cashback offer regardless of wether you buy the policy or not.

We already have one lucky MSE user who has received a win on this.:)

Mikeyorks

For convenience of monitoring monthly outgoings I've been paying mine and my wife's insurances monthly for several years.

Recently retired - decided that could now stop and I would pay in advance from now on.

Rang Esure yesterday - having recently received renewal quotes I am happy with - apart from the instalment charges.

Tried to remove 'including commuting' as that must surely reduce their risk / my cost? To be met by a negative, as that 'is bundled with social / domestic etc and doesn't impact your quote'! And that was just the first surprise.

Never have found the Esure call centre staff to be very amenable - but the request to pay in a single sum definitely won me no friends. Having been on hold for several minutes I was advised that a single payment increased my quote from £248 (not inc instalment charges) to £285 !! BUT - they would 'write off' the extra £37!

Decided they had probably made a mess of the recalculation - until my wife's premium, for a single payment, escalated from £189 to £250 'and that will probably be too much for us to write off'. Had barely mentioned my right to cancel - when I was asked for payment data to pay the lower sum!

Esure Customer Services now have an Email from me enquiring if it is policy to load single payment policies. It is considerably more polite than their member of staff - but I do feel my long term relationship with Halifax and then Esure slowly ebbing away!