Admiral multi car quote, too good to be true?

lindos90 · 15 February 2010 at 10:46PM

Our car insurance is up for renewal soon, we both have a car and insurance from Tesco, our renewal quotes for fully comp are £250 for me, and nearly £300 for my other half.

We have done the 'renewal bartering' with tesco for the past couple of years, and stayed with them, but this year my other half has got a really good admiral multi car quote for us both for £350, (a saving of £200 on what Tesco are offering!!!)

Now I like a bargin, but alarm bells are ringing, are there any big pitfalls that we dont know about? Does a claim by one person affect both policy holders/NCD, is the claims process poor?

I have looked at reviews, which are mixed (as they seem to be for Tesco as well) but many of the reviews mention 'albany legal assistance' being the problem, is that the optional legal protection cover?

Just wanting to double check for advice, as im reluctant to leave tesco, as Ive been with them several years, I made a claim 2 years ago, and it was fairly straightforward....but a saving of £200 cannot be ignored...unless admiral is not a good insurance company to go with.

huckster · 16 February 2010 at 12:59AM

I would think, but I don't know for sure, that if both cars are insured under one policy with Admiral, you would only have one allowance for no claims discount. So a claim against one car, would affect the premiums for both cars. Then if you wanted to look at obtaining quotes at future renewals, you only have one NCD that can be used. So you could then be stuck with having to arrange multi-car policies.

Under the Tesco Insurance, I believe you have two different policies (one for each car), each having individual no claims discounts, with a discount allowed against both policies for having more than one policy. If you claimed it would only affect the relevant policy, with there being no affect on the other separate policy.

In regard to Admiral, I have read mixed reviews, but this is probably the case for most Insurers.

shelly · 16 February 2010 at 1:31AM

huckster wrote: »

Under the Tesco Insurance, I believe you have two different policies (one for each car), each having individual no claims discounts, with a discount allowed against both policies for having more than one policy. If you claimed it would only affect the relevant policy, with there being no affect on the other separate policy.

We have our 2 cars on an Admiral Multicar Policy and how you have described Tesco insurance is how Admiral Multicar works.

Each of our cars has its own paperwork/policy. Each car is using and earning its own NCB and we had a discount for taking a multicar policy.
If we claim on car A only that cars policy would lose NCB (though hubby has full NCB protected so that doesn't affect us) but obviously at renewal a claim has to be declared on both policies so premium would likely rise on both cars.

keith1950 · 16 February 2010 at 6:14AM

Hi, from my experience with Admiral you get a very good introductory discount for the 1st year and then you will find the premium for both rises by about 30-40% for the next year.

PNPSUKNET · 16 February 2010 at 8:03AM

plus say you have one car due in feb and one in august, one joins first then you pay the say feb cars insurance to august then a new policy starts but you pay for a year. thats the pitfall I found. Im with them now

soolin · 16 February 2010 at 9:13AM

We had three cars insured with Admiral multi car and whilst they were much cheaper we did find a real problem, they use a thrid party claim handling service called Albany who were worryingly awful (there is a thread about them where I have added my own problems).

One of our cars was less than a year old when someone crashed into it and wrote it off and it was at that point that we found out that whilst most companies will actually replace the insured vehicle with a new identical one, Admiral will not. So because we negotiated an excellent deal on the car last summer we cannot afford to replace it even with a similar aged car on what Admiral were going to pay us out. They were also going to mak eno attemot to recover our excess from the guilty party leaving us to deal with Albany who were truly awful.

Luckily in our case the other party admitted full liability and we claimed through their insurance instead and although we still didn't get enough to replace the car they gace us a straight £500 more than Admiral were going to give us and of course we also automatically got the £500 excess repaid as well.

None of this would matter of course if the cars are older, but I thought it worth mentioning. The only other things is the courtesy car that can be paid for as part of the policy in case your own car is off the road due to an accident, this is NOT a courtesy car with Admiral, instead you are referred to Albany who hire you a car and get you to sign credit agreements saying you are liable if they can't get payment from a third party.

lindos90 · 16 February 2010 at 1:26PM

Thanks for all the replies, very helpful, both our policies are due at the same time, and both cars are old (mines a T reg escort, his is an 52 picasso) so some issues not a problem for us.

If it goes up 40% next year, not an issue as I will be checking other quotes again, they just gamble on some people being complacent and just stay even if the premium goes up, but I have had help from MSE and dont do that any more:money:!!

Hire car again not such an issue, as I dont work, and could manage to do school runs at a push without mine for a few days.

The albany bit concerns me, as its only when you have to make a claim that you find out how good the poilicy is.

Plan to call tesco this afternoon and cross my fingers, but I really doubt they can match this.

Thanks for all the advice everyone!

keith1950 · 16 February 2010 at 1:58PM

Hi, PNPSUKNET, I may have misunderstood you but when I joined Admiral I unsured the 1st car in February for one year and then when the 2nd car was due in May it was for 9 months so that both policies would run out together in the next February.

lindos90 · 18 February 2010 at 6:25PM

Well just a quick update (always try and do this if im the OP as its sometimes helpful if this thread is found in someones sarch in the future..)

Called tesco, they relooked at our quotes, but could only 'shave' £20 ish off each policy, so still no comparison to the admiral quote.

Checked the admiral quote, and my OH had slightly over-estimated our number of no claim years!! we re submitted with correct years and was just a few pounds more, so went with them.

Had to call to buy, you are unable to do it all online. Theres a £4.50 charge if you pay by credit card (not if its debit card) that it does not say on the web site, while on the phone the assistant tried to bump up the cost by asking us to buy other 'optional' bits and bobs like breakdown cover, car hire cover (if car stolen instead of damaged) and personal injury insurance, which we declined!

The quote online does include insurance premium tax, legal cover (which im guessing includeds the dreaded 'albany') and also NCD protection (if you choose this as an option during the online quote process).

So far so good, just hope Tesco send us written confirmation of our years of no claims, and that the paperwork comes through ok from Admiral.

Admiral multi car quote, too good to be true?

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