Buying used car - what to do about insurance to drive home?

Addiscomber

Our son wants to buy his first car. What will he need to do about insurance to drive the car home? (It will be parked off road once here.)

I have seen links in threads here to a website for getting temporary cover, but he won't know the car details until he is at the dealers and actually decides to buy, so I cannot see how he can do that. Could his father drive it under his policy which allows him to drive other cars with the owner's permission?

westy69

the dealer should be able to offer him 7 days free cover - most can, if not i think you can get 7 days free cover through the RAC website, failing that yes his dad should be able to drive it.

Inactive

Ask the dealer to deliver it on Trade Plates.

Keith

Most of the time the car will not be ready to drive home that day.

So in the time between agreeing to buy the vehicle and collecting it, your son will be given all of the information to insure the vehicle.

Before he signs the sales agreement he should have a HPI check performed on the vehicle.

westy69

Keith wrote: »

Most of the time the car will not be ready to drive home that day.

So in the time between agreeing to buy the vehicle and collecting it, your son will be given all of the information to insure the vehicle.

Before he signs the sales agreement he should have a HPI check performed on the vehicle.

The HPI check costs £5 on the RAC website and i think that will give you 7 days free insurance, although if you are buying from a dealer it should have been HPI'd already.

Thunderbird_2

westy69 wrote: »

failing that yes his dad should be able to drive it.

Some insurers, to allow this, they demand that car to be insured by a policy of its own.
For example, if I am the owner of a car that is not insured at all ( and parked in a private land), then, you can't drive it on public roads on your own policy (which should be a fully comp one most of the time) even if you have my permission to drive it. I need to have the car insured before your policy might cover it. Your policy would cover it then third party only.

Edit to the OP: as previously suggested, either you sort out the insurance while waiting for the car to be ready or ask the dealer to deliver it on trade plates ( you can use this to seal the deal at the end to buy the car after you reached a price you are prepared to pay for the car and the delivery service would sweeten the deal!)

Conor_3

Surely you want to get a full policy anyway unless you're prepared to risk losing the lot if someone steals it off your drive.

I can never work out why people don't feel the need to have insurance for it just because it's not being driven. Do thefts of motor vehicles only happen on roads?

Addiscomber

Thanks all.

Conor
Our son will be getting insurance for it, but we are just working out the logistics of getting it home for the first time when we don't see how we can arrange insurance when he doesn't know if, or what, he will be buying. My comment about it being parked off road was because it would need to be insured to be parked on the road and somebody would have been sure to have pointed that out.

anewman

What he will be buying will affect the cost of insurance, but if you're loaded anyway that doesn't matter and you can buy full insurance cover on the net or by phone the same day.

No point buying a car, getting cheap insurance for a day and leaving it on the drive to find out insurance is £2000 more than you thought.