80 insurance renewal

[frank rabbets]

Had my M+S renewal today at £330. Last year they were cheapest at the time at £300.

Today I got a quote through Moneysupermarket and Saga have just taken me on at £198 so worth checking around.

Brief details of my circumstances:-

1995 4.2 td VX.
5000 miles year.
Locked garage day/night.
£400 total excess.
Full AA breakdown.
Me and my wife to drive fully comp.
European driving cover but not European breakdown due to age of car but if I phone with holiday dates they may well do it free.

Quite happy about that.

Frank

 

[Red Oktober]

thats very very good ..... shame i ain't old enough to get on saga's books

cheapest i've had so far is £409 from CIS ..

 

[Shayne]

I learned too late i should have told them i can also drive the mrs car because it would have saved me a bundle , or so i'm told ?

 

[Rob]

Cheapest I found was £380 with Adrain Flux, and that is with a long list of mods, 3 years NCB. Most companies on the the price comparison websites will not insure me due to the mods.

 

[frank rabbets]

Hi Shayne
The Mrs' car would have had to have its' own policy as well though. As I understand it.
I've had to go back to M+S because it costs me a lot to get European Breakdown cover because of the age of the car. So I have 90 days cover with M+S. They came down to £323. Funnily enough they will not now let me drive another vehicle not belonging to me.

Frank

 

[Dave_S]

Need to be careful re seats - Flux are not competitive if you have all seats ( 3 rows ) fitted.. not sure why. I've gone with a local company (Tower) who undercut Flux by several hundred quid - primarily down to the number of seats (Flux have insured lots of modded vehicle for me, the L80 is the first one that they were stupid expensive on and couldn't get close to Tower).

BTW - if you have a "like for like" policy with Flux be careful - this only applies to partial loss - in the case of a full write off they switch to market value - we had this with the wife's Cherokee, and it all got a bit nasty... they wouldn't recognise that the vehicle was worth £3k and the mods another £2k.... but if we'd have just damaged it, they would have had no problem putting the modded parts back on. Weird and not customer friendly in the slightest. PM me if you want more info...

 

[Dave_S]

Hi Shayne
The Mrs' car would have had to have its' own policy as well though. As I understand it.
I've had to go back to M+S because it costs me a lot to get European Breakdown cover because of the age of the car. So I have 90 days cover with M+S. They came down to £323. Funnily enough they will not now let me drive another vehicle not belonging to me.

Frank

Just do the AA cover separately - they dont ask the vehicle details and its no more expensive. The insurance cos are on commission from the AA so you don't get a good deal from them in any case. Sez the bloke who works for an insurance company ;-)

 

[Shayne]

They all have thier own quirky ways of working it out so you are a higher risk anyway , if the wife ask you if you want a cup of tea while you were on the phone getting quotes they would likely add 5% because more tea drinkers die every year in China than coffee drinkers !

I would like to have a chat with those kitcar enthusiasts , How on earth do they get insurance ? I can only guess they agree a value with insurance and thats it , how that value is worked out is beyond me but i remember reading about a fella who insured a parts bin v8 deathtrap for less than a hundred quid and thought to myself wow i wonder how you go about re-registering your car as a kitcar ?

 

[Shayne]

Hi Shayne
The Mrs' car would have had to have its' own policy as well though. As I understand it.
I've had to go back to M+S because it costs me a lot to get European Breakdown cover because of the age of the car. So I have 90 days cover with M+S. They came down to £323. Funnily enough they will not now let me drive another vehicle not belonging to me.

Frank

I'm not exactly sure how it works but as i understand it - if your mrs has her own insured car you can probably have yourself added as a second driver on her policy , this will only cover you while driving her car but costs very little . Then when you go to insure your own car you have halved the risk of crashing it because they can only assume you split your driving 50/50 between your own and your wifes car .

Sounds stupid i know but thats how it was explained to me

 

[Dave_S]

Shayne - I could explain the cost risk ratio but to be honest it would bore the hell out of both of us. The bottom line is pretty simple.... (a) any cheap or free ad ons ( AA cover or whatever) are anything but free, they're just loaded into the cost; (b) any agent - whether they're a bloke in an office or an on line aggregator will cost you money in terms of commission - anything from 10% to 40% of your premium and (c) a lot of cheap deals on kit cars and similar vehicles reflect that they do very limited mileage and are driven my people who care for their vehicles. Its all a numbers game at the end of the day - the insurers aren't ripping anyone off, but the brokers sometimes do...

 

[Shayne]

Insurers aren't ripping anyone off ! they take about 6 grand a year out of this house for .... erm ... nothing that i can think of other than the law demands we pay it .

 

[Dave_S]

You miss my point - insurers are commercial companies, like most. Their job is to balance risk against cost and still make a profit (and not as much as you may think). Not sure what you are referring to re the law, but ultimately premiums pay claims. If you think you are being ripped off, take a look around at the number of people making claims inappropriately - burned carpets, damaged rads, phones down the toilet.... I could go on.

 

[Shayne]

I balance risk against cost to try to make a profit every day as i make my living commercial fishing , if i made 1 pence for every fish i caught i'd be a happy man but i don't . If like an insurance company i could just say to people "the weather was bad today so i'm trebling the price of fish and you HAVE to buy it or you will be arrested" I would be a millionaire many times over by now .

Has any insurance company ever posted an annual profit of less than a billion ?

While it is law people must be covered by insurance there should also be laws limiting the profiteering of insurers . My access is about £400 on my truck and i am in no doubt if i needed an insured repair that would cost £800 they would write my truck off and i'd end up wishing i had never paid for insurance in the first place .

 

[Chris Green90]

Sorry Dave but Shayne is right. Until Car insurance is publicised (probably not right but opposite of privatised) or there is a limit on profits it is always going to be a con. No matter which way you cut it. The fact remains that they all can charge what the hell they like.

There used to be a reasonable get out clause that I think footballers used to use. Basically you used to be able to "invest" 15k with the bank of england and that would cover you for 3rd party insurance. If a claim wasn't made you got 70% of it back when you decided to opt out. The 15 k figure has now gone up to £1m i think which makes it a much less viable option.

 

[Chas]

The 15 k figure has now gone up to £1m i think which makes it a much less viable option.

I think that probably given todays 'compensation' culture that figure is likely to be much higher than that. But if I won a Lottery roll-over that's what I'd do.

 

[Chris Green90]

Pretty sure it's still £1m Chas but don't think the payback is as high.

 

[Chas]

Pretty sure it's still £1m Chas but don't think the payback is as high.

Better start saving me pennies then.

 

[Shayne]

The compensation culture was arrived at by people being treated with absolute contempt and ripped off by insurance companies . Once insurance was seen by the man on the street as a safety net . But eventually people woke up to the scam and now everyone has contempt for the insurance people .

The footballer's clause is a perfect example of the average bloke paying for the lifestyles of millionaires . 15 grand and he writes off a couple of hundred thousand pounds worth of car - who pays for it - me and you thats who .

 

[Chris Green90]

lol. IIRC that covers you for any car aswell. so if you have 10 car in the garage you only pay the £1m. That is something that has always bugged me about car insurance. Say I have 5 cars. eg. A Veryon, an LC, a Mondeo, an X type and a corsa. You should be able to get insurance on the Veyron and the other vehicles should be "named on the policy". I mean you can only drive 1 at a time so as long as you are covered for the one on the highest insurance group it should cover you for anything less. That is in my opinion how car insurance should work (Although it would be neigh on impossible to police). Basically you pick your insurance group. eg. 8 and that entitles you to drive anything up to and including insurance group 8. Why should we pay the full rate of insureance for each car we own. It's ridiculous.

OK so someone will bring up temp insurance for the cars you only take out now and then but in this day and age how do you keep them taxed. No insurance means you have to declare SORN but you can't get tax on a temp insured car. unless you commit fraud and insure the car, get cover note, tax it then cancel insurance withing the 14 days. It's a F@*king Joke.

 

[Chris Green90]

The footballer's clause is a perfect example of the average bloke paying for the lifestyles of millionaires . 15 grand and he writes off a couple of hundred thousand pounds worth of car - who pays for it - me and you thats who .

Not exactly mate. It only works out that way if he writes off someone elses car. The clause is like 3rd party insurance. Plus who do you think pays for the same claim when normal insurance companies are involved