Car Insurance...robbing b******s

[Uncle_Meat]

Been looking around for a cheap old shitter, just something to get around in which does not drink petrol like the Zafira does.

 

Anyways, quotes for cars such like Corsa 1.4s, Citroen AX, Pug 106s and so on, fully comp, legal cover but with no NCB for myself (Got shitloads of motorbike NCB, but that does not count towards car insewerance) are all coming in at around £300.

 

Win.

[Chairman Meow]

I don't buy the argument that insurance has been under priced for years. I've been involved in the motor trade my entire life and am now full time self employed in the trade after being made redundant in an a different industry.

 

When I was 17 the place my dad worked at got an 850cc Mini in part ex and I could have it for less than £100 (I can't remember the exact amount as it was a long time ago but it was definitely under the ton as that was my budget at the time) when I phoned up to get insurance quotes for it the cheapest I could get was about £800 quid third party only with non of that fancy fire and theft nonsense included. They wouldn't accept the car was worth so little and wanted a £300 excess. By comparison my mk2 1600 Escort was quoted at £1800 third parts, but my 2.9V6 Granada was quoted at £1200 fully comp.

 

I ended up on my dads trade policy as it would actually have been cheaper for me to pay his entire policy with public liability and all that lot included which covered me for any car (and I do mean any car) than get my own insurance. I've ended up never actually being insured on anything but my dads trade policy which is now in my name since I started trading.

 

For those interested I bought the Mini anyway as I was racing one at the time and spare body shells always come in useful but used the V6 Granada as a road car instead.

 

I've recently been looking at separate insurance for the rally cars and my old Escorts as they are now quite valuable.

 

On limited mileage with an agreed value of £45k (I didn't pay anywhere near that for it by the way) an ex official Vauxhall rally prepared Chevette which is basically a 700kg tin box with a 2.6 Engine, 280odd horsepower, expensive gearbox, axle etc. was £180 third party fire and theft with limited road mileage and third party cover on road sections during rallys. My 1800 Golf with only uprated suspension, underbody guards, spot lights and uprated brakes got quoted at £320.

 

I've already had my Mk1 Escort quoted at the specification I intend to build it too which again will be a tiny little tin box with 240+ horsepower and with an agreed value and that is quoted cheaper than an old Granada estate.

 

I'm fairly certain they just make it up as they go along.

[Dan Vito Corleone]

It's all about the postcode.

 

I dispute that to be honest.

 

I moved to an area with less crime (I checked) 18 months ago and my policy went UP. By £30. A MONTH.

[Karl_b]

I dispute that to be honest.

 

I moved to an area with less crime (I checked) 18 months ago and my policy went UP. By £30. A MONTH.

 

When we moved last summer the missus' insurance went up by about £150 a year when she asked why they said it was the "postcode" and when she said that it was a nice area, with private parking and very little crime the guy asked what cars are neighbours had. When she told them that one has a Ferrari and another an Audi R8 he said "That's why, they're nicer cars to steal."

 

Fucking mental, so it's more expensive in an area with more crime but also more expensive in a nicer area with less crime and nice cars. I'd have kicked off it was me but she's too nice when it comes to these sorts of things.

[RoboRiise]

Right chaps, quick question that requires an urgent answer from someone that knows what they're talking about. Note, by "someone that knows what they're talking about" I mean someone that's worked in the industry and is aware of the actual legal position here, not someone that heard something from a bloke in a pub.

 

I'm currently renewing my insurance and the quotes I'm getting are taking the fucking piss. Last year I paid £360 fully comp, this year my renewal quote from the same company was £558 (a 55% increase). This is to insure a 14 year old 1.2L Fiat Punto, doing 5000 miles a year tops. 12 years no claims discount, no convictions or points and the insured value is a highly optimistic £550.

 

I've done the price comparison searches and the cheapest I can find is about £490. If I add my mam onto the policy as a named driver (she's 69 and hasn't driven for 25 years but has a full UK licence) that goes down to £420.

 

I know that if you're a young driver and get your own car insured in your mums name with you as a named driver (when you're actually the main driver) then you're on very dodgy legal ground and would probably get your insurance invalidated in the event of a crash and claim. What's the deal with the reverse situation though, legally speaking?

 

I mean it's unlikely beyond belief that she'll ever drive the car - to me, adding her as a named driver is merely saying that I want her to have the option of using it should a situation arise where she has to, but that £70 reduction in the policy says to me that the insurers are expecting that she will actually be using it for part of the time, thus reducing the risk to them.

 

My mam is not going to be lying to insurance investigators, it just won't happen, so if I do have a bump it will become obvious that she was never going to drive the fucker. That £70 is really needed right now but not so much that I want to be risking invalidating my insurance with all of the cataclysmic consequences that would follow.

 

I need to sort this out today (why so late? Because it never entered my head that the ludicrous quote I had from my current insurer would be replicated across the board!) so if anyone can give me an informed answer I'd appreciate it. If you don't work in insurance or the legal profession, feel free to post anyway but understand that I'll be ignoring your opinion because I really can't expose myself to those potential risks on the basis of what might have happened to you when you had a bump five years ago or something.

 

Cheers.

[Trumo]

There is NO problem insuring your mum as a named driver to get your premium down. Insurers won't look at how much driving experience she has, just how long she's held her licence, and that she has a full licence. Some might ask how often she'll drive, in which case the best answer is "infrequently". As you say, she won't be using it anyway, so your actual circumstances haven't changed. Is it right? Probably not, but it's isn't illegal either, whereas driving around while uninsured IS. Basically it's whether it affects you sleeping at night.

[RoboRiise]

There is NO problem insuring your mum as a named driver to get your premium down. Insurers won't look at how much driving experience she has, just how long she's held her licence, and that she has a full licence. Some might ask how often she'll drive, in which case the best answer is "infrequently". As you say, she won't be using it anyway, so your actual circumstances haven't changed. Is it right? Probably not, but it's isn't illegal either, whereas driving around while uninsured IS. Basically it's whether it affects you sleeping at night.

 

 

For the sake of clarity, I'm utterly unconcerned about the moral aspects of it (the moral aspects of them charging a guy who's nearly 40 with no claims in 12 years a premium virtually the same as the value of his car saw to that) and zero sleep will be lost. I should probably have phrased the question like this:

 

If I add her onto the policy, then have a bump and it becomes clear that she was never going to drive the car, will my insurers just harrumph about it a bit or will they have legal grounds to say my insurance was invalid, therefore making me uninsured at the time of the crash and leaving me squarely in the shit?

 

The bold part is the key - the only reason a policy can become cheaper with another named driver on it is because the company assumes they will be driving the car some of the time, meaning that the main higher-risk driver is not driving it all the time. If that driver was never going to drive the car, my thought is that this is basically fraud.

 

If you think I'm being overly fussy about this btw, the reason is that I know someone who was fucked right over for doing the reverse of this - the situation I highlighted in my original post with him being a named driver with his folks as the main drivers on what was basically his own car. His insurance was invalidated because when the investigators came out to speak to them, his mam was totally honest and said that she'd never driven the car. That's what my mam is like as well and at 69 I'm not going to change her! I appreciate the circumstances are reversed but the underlying principle is the same - reducing the cost by creating a false perception of reduced risk.

 

Insurers don't have any generosity where this kind of thing is concerned and having that happen to me for the sake of £70 is a risk I simply can't take, so if they would treat the fact that an additional named driver has never and realistically was never going to drive the car as a reason to cancel the policy in the event of a claim, I won't be doing it. If on the other hand the underwriter's assumption is that a named driver MAY drive the car, but not necessarily that they WILL drive it at any point during the life of the policy, there's no issue. That's why I was after an insight from someone in the business if possible.

[Trumo]

It's already clear to the insurer that you own the car and will be the main driver, so anybody named will by definition be using the car less frequently than you. The reason insurers get arsey with younger drivers insuring their own vehicle under their parents' name is that they know the only reason for doing so is to drive the premium down. When I was selling insurance (about 5-10 years ago now) I was probing queries like this all the time and it was soon obvious that the young driver would be the main user. In your situation they would have no problem covering you and honouring the terms, but that doesn't mean you have to give them too much detail about your motives. They are already aware the circumstances between your situation and that of a young driver are completely different.

 

None of the information you give the insurers about your mother will say anything about her not having driven for so many years. The nearest would be "are they named on another policy?" or "do they own a car?". Neither of which establish a lengthy duration of time without having been behind the wheel, as the answer "no" to either question could have been true for 20 years or 20 days.

[Vincent Vega]

RR, have you had a quote from Esure? They only take on drivers with five years no claims and seem to be the cheapest because of that. I drive a Focus Titanium 1.6 petrol, have 3 points for speeding, 6 years no claims and no other driver on my policy and only paid £400 (this was my renewal cost in February and went up by £60 on last year, but Esure was still the cheapest quote by a mile). If you go through Quidco you also get £25.00 cashback too. I pay my insurance in one go as it's a complete rip-off spreading the cost over the year with the 29% mark-up most companies put on. Your quotes seem very pricey, do you live in a dodgy postcode?

[RoboRiise]

RR, have you had a quote from Esure? They only take on drivers with five years no claims and seem to be the cheapest because of that. I drive a Focus Titanium 1.6 petrol, have 3 points for speeding, 6 years no claims and no other driver on my policy and only paid £400 (this was my renewal cost in February and went up by £60 on last year, but Esure was still the cheapest quote by a mile). If you go through Quidco you also get £25.00 cashback too. I pay my insurance in one go as it's a complete rip-off spreading the cost over the year with the 29% mark-up most companies put on. Your quotes seem very pricey, do you live in a dodgy postcode?

 

 

Esure are included in gocompare and the meerkat people and they can't provide a quote. I'd guess it's because the car is a 14 year old piece of shit.

 

As for the postcode, I honestly don't know. It's not going to be the best because it's a council property and the surrounding area has had the kind of low-level drug and anti-social behaviour issues that you'd expect in such an area but it's not Moss Side or Cheetham Hill or anything. To be honest, I reckon they think I live in fucking Kandahar or something looking at those quotes, they're absolutely fucking outrageous.

 

Anyway, a further issue occurred to me since the first post - my mam's licence expires next January anyway because she turns 70 and she's got no intention of renewing it so it looks like I'll just have to put my hand in my pocket.

 

I'm weighing up whether to go for a temporary promotion opportunity at work at the moment, it's shitty hours (10pm finishes for a year) but I was thinking of going for it because it's the only way I'll be able to find about £2,500 to get a better car in the forseeable future. Based on these quotes though, I'm realising that I probably wouldn't be able to afford to insure anything better anyway.

 

It's soul-destroying sometimes to have expectations for your life that are so fucking modest and yet still not be able to achieve them. This is what I'm working for? So that I can just about afford to run and insure a 14 year old shitbox of a car? What a bunch of shit.

[Vincent Vega]

Go to Esure's website instead of through the comparison sites and see what they offer. I tried Direct Line, Aviva and the others that don't offer through the comparison sites and still couldn't get a cheaper quote than Esure. You should have no problem with 12 years no claims. I pay for protected no claims and that adds about £40 or £50 to the price and my policy also guarantees me a courtesy car if I have to make a claim and my car's off the road.

[RoboRiise]

Go to Esure's website instead of through the comparison sites and see what they offer. I tried Direct Line, Aviva and the others that don't offer through the comparison sites and still couldn't get a cheaper quote than Esure. You should have no problem with 12 years no claims. I pay for protected no claims and that adds about £40 or £50 to the price and my policy also guarantees me a courtesy car if I have to make a claim and my car's off the road.

 

 

Esure - I just did try their website directly, says they can't offer a quote for the details I've supplied but doesn't give any further info.

 

Direct line - tried them last year, they wanted about £800 which is about as clear a "fuck off" as I've ever seen from an insurance company.

 

Edit: Just tried Direct Line, even funnier than I expected. Check this out - no protected no claims, no legal cover, voluntary excess maxed out at £450 (on a car valued at £550!), no courtesy cars etc, they want £1,280.48 fully comp or £1,083.32 for third party fire & theft. It's fucking insanity.

 

The thing that gets me the most is that regardless of the postcode, I've lived here for each and every one of the twelve years that I accrued my no claims bonus which kind of suggests to a rational mind that it's not actually that risky, on account of nothing having happened to the car during that time.

[Vincent Vega]

Esure - I just did try their website directly, says they can't offer a quote for the details I've supplied but doesn't give any further info.

 

Direct line - tried them last year, they wanted about £800 which is about as clear a "fuck off" as I've ever seen from an insurance company.

 

Strange that Esure don't want to know with 12 years no claims, it may well be down to your postcode, I know a lad I work with gets had off because he lives in Whiston but then he does drive a 57 plate Audi A3 and is a stones throw from Whiston Hospital which is apparently a hotspot for stolen cars.

[RoboRiise]

Strange that Esure don't want to know with 12 years no claims, it may well be down to your postcode, I know a lad I work with gets had off because he lives in Whiston but then he does drive a 57 plate Audi A3 and is a stones throw from Whiston Hospital which is apparently a hotspot for stolen cars.

 

 

It seriously could be the car as well - there's plenty of firms that keep premiums cheap for people wanting to insure their family car that gets changed every three yeas by refusing to touch people like me that drive an old banger because they haven't got the cash to upgrade.

 

The postcode thing is odd though if that's it - I mean it's not the leafy suburbs or anything but in no way is it an inner-city hellhole either, nor is it a hotbed of car crime; it couldn't be because only about 1 in 5 families round here have a car to start with!

 

 

(Edit: At some point when I've got all this sorted out, I'm going to go back to gocompare and cuntpunchthemeerkat, stick in some fictitious people across the full range of customer demographics and at a range of postcodes in the surrounding areas, from the highly prized to the utterly awful and have a see just what range of quotes they offer. Then I'll try to see if I can make any kind of sense of the logic behind them and whip up a blog post about it.)

[Trumo]

If you want to see how your postcode is rated, then look at

 

Post Code ratings for Car Insurance

[MOGLET]

Swift cover are cheapest by a mile for me, only problem ive had with them is, they dont send you an insurance document, you get it all online, and have to print off your own copy.

 

Which isnt a problem, but when you come to renewing your tax, the PO wont accept it as a genuine certificate.

 

If you buy your tax online its fine, as the DVLA know your insured, but the PO are cunts.

 

 

My insurance in business use not standard Car insurance, and with Swift, I am just under £200 a year better off than the go compare type lists of insurers.

[RoboRiise]

If you want to see how your postcode is rated, then look at

 

Post Code ratings for Car Insurance

 

 

Cheers for that mate, very useful link.

 

Unsurprisingly in view of the quotes, I live in an F rated postcode area. I was right in saying that this area is in no way a bad one compared to some areas of Oldham though, check out the full list:

 

OL Oldham

1-5, 7-9, 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . F *

6, 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Refer

10-14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E *

 

So the best rating in the entire postcode area (that's all of Oldham and Rochdale) is an E, where A is the best and F is the lowest. That's truly fucking insane.

 

I realise most of you won't be that familiar with Oldham but believe me, it's not all race riots and combat18. Here's some lovely houses for sale in the town, the dearest one on the front page of this list is £645,000.

 

Greenfield, Oldham Houses for Sale

 

All of these are in F rated postcode areas and these are emphatically not having Maseratis stolen off the driveway every day! As someone said above, you live on a sink estate you're deemed a high risk because it's full of scalls but if you live in a classy area, you're deemed a high risk because everyone has nice cars that are attractive to thieves, even if they don't actually get nicked.

 

Based on that logic, why is pretty much all of Bath rated A and B? Are they saying that it's a lovely place, probably full of nice cars, but no-one steals them there? Seriously, there are no scalls at all in Bath? What do they do, give anyone remotely scummy a one-way bus ticket when they turn 11 and run them out of town?

 

I've got my holiday this summer sussed out now anyway - I'm going to go to Bath for a week and become a one-man crimewave; I'll show the smug cunts. They'll be paying £5k a year to insure a fucking tuk-tuk by the time I'm done.

[RoboRiise]

Swift cover are cheapest by a mile for me, only problem ive had with them is, they dont send you an insurance document, you get it all online, and have to print off your own copy.

 

 

Only problem I have with them is that they won't offer me a quote.

[AnnaJu14]

Right chaps, quick question that requires an urgent answer from someone that knows what they're talking about. Note, by "someone that knows what they're talking about" I mean someone that's worked in the industry and is aware of the actual legal position here, not someone that heard something from a bloke in a pub.

 

I'm currently renewing my insurance and the quotes I'm getting are taking the fucking piss. Last year I paid £360 fully comp, this year my renewal quote from the same company was £558 (a 55% increase). This is to insure a 14 year old 1.2L Fiat Punto, doing 5000 miles a year tops. 12 years no claims discount, no convictions or points and the insured value is a highly optimistic £550.

 

I've done the price comparison searches and the cheapest I can find is about £490. If I add my mam onto the policy as a named driver (she's 69 and hasn't driven for 25 years but has a full UK licence) that goes down to £420.

 

I know that if you're a young driver and get your own car insured in your mums name with you as a named driver (when you're actually the main driver) then you're on very dodgy legal ground and would probably get your insurance invalidated in the event of a crash and claim. What's the deal with the reverse situation though, legally speaking?

 

I mean it's unlikely beyond belief that she'll ever drive the car - to me, adding her as a named driver is merely saying that I want her to have the option of using it should a situation arise where she has to, but that £70 reduction in the policy says to me that the insurers are expecting that she will actually be using it for part of the time, thus reducing the risk to them.

 

My mam is not going to be lying to insurance investigators, it just won't happen, so if I do have a bump it will become obvious that she was never going to drive the fucker. That £70 is really needed right now but not so much that I want to be risking invalidating my insurance with all of the cataclysmic consequences that would follow.

 

I need to sort this out today (why so late? Because it never entered my head that the ludicrous quote I had from my current insurer would be replicated across the board!) so if anyone can give me an informed answer I'd appreciate it. If you don't work in insurance or the legal profession, feel free to post anyway but understand that I'll be ignoring your opinion because I really can't expose myself to those potential risks on the basis of what might have happened to you when you had a bump five years ago or something.

 

Cheers.

 

Raise your mileage to 8000

[RoboRiise]

Raise your mileage to 8000

 

 

Tried raising it to "up to 8000" - that added £20 onto all the cheapest quotes. Raised it to "up to 9000" in case 8000 was the trigger point rather than 7999, that added a further tenner. Incremental increases of 1000 miles increased the quotes by a tenner each time.

 

Since increasing the mileage seems counter-intuitive as a way to reduce premiums, I guessing the thinking here was that either the low mileage marks me as some kind of Sunday driver with a corresponding increase in risk, or that there's an assumption that if I do higher mileage I'll be doing a greater proportion of it on motorways which are statistically safer to drive on - is that about right?

 

What all this is telling me is that the main factor influencing the cost of my quotes is the one that I can't do anything about - the postcode. At least I know now, cheers for that people. Rep will be heading to you all when the cannons have been recharged.

[Vincent Vega]

 

Cheers for that mate, very useful link.

 

Unsurprisingly in view of the quotes, I live in an F rated postcode area. I was right in saying that this area is in no way a bad one compared to some areas of Oldham though, check out the full list:

 

So the best rating in the entire postcode area (that's all of Oldham and Rochdale) is an E, where A is the best and F is the lowest. That's truly fucking insane.

 

I realise most of you won't be that familiar with Oldham but believe me, it's not all race riots and combat18. Here's some lovely houses for sale in the town, the dearest one on the front page of this list is £645,000.

 

Greenfield, Oldham Houses for Sale

 

All of these are in F rated postcode areas and these are emphatically not having Maseratis stolen off the driveway every day! As someone said above, you live on a sink estate you're deemed a high risk because it's full of scalls but if you live in a classy area, you're deemed a high risk because everyone has nice cars that are attractive to thieves, even if they don't actually get nicked.

 

Based on that logic, why is pretty much all of Bath rated A and B? Are they saying that it's a lovely place, probably full of nice cars, but no-one steals them there? Seriously, there are no scalls at all in Bath? What do they do, give anyone remotely scummy a one-way bus ticket when they turn 11 and run them out of town?

 

I've got my holiday this summer sussed out now anyway - I'm going to go to Bath for a week and become a one-man crimewave; I'll show the smug cunts. They'll be paying £5k a year to insure a fucking tuk-tuk by the time I'm done.

 

You probably live in an area with a high rate of ambulance chasers mate. When they have a crash, both cars with a single driver in suddenly have three passengers in each car with whiplash when the insurance forms go in, and before you know it £2.5k for each passenger. Also people who aren't really injured think "fuck it, I may as well milk this" and make a claim anyway. You also probably live in an area with a high proportion of uninsured drivers which means your insurer gets stung if you have a prang which isn't your fault. It's shite but you get penalised because some of the people in your community are cunts.

 

I had a look at that postcode thing Trumo put up and it seems Runcorn is classified as a C, we must have a better class of scum than Chadderton.

[melons]

Right chaps, quick question that requires an urgent answer from someone that knows what they're talking about. Note, by "someone that knows what they're talking about" I mean someone that's worked in the industry and is aware of the actual legal position here, not someone that heard something from a bloke in a pub.

 

I'm currently renewing my insurance and the quotes I'm getting are taking the fucking piss. Last year I paid £360 fully comp, this year my renewal quote from the same company was £558 (a 55% increase). This is to insure a 14 year old 1.2L Fiat Punto, doing 5000 miles a year tops. 12 years no claims discount, no convictions or points and the insured value is a highly optimistic £550.

 

I've done the price comparison searches and the cheapest I can find is about £490. If I add my mam onto the policy as a named driver (she's 69 and hasn't driven for 25 years but has a full UK licence) that goes down to £420...

 

Didn't i offer to marry you last year when you were having a hissy fit with your insurance (may of been me) renewal? Pissed up there didn't ya? For £50 we could of had the deed done and both our insurance lowered.

 

 

If you want to see how your postcode is rated, then look at

 

Post Code ratings for Car Insurance

 

What a crock of shit, i move to north Wales' answer to Tripoli and I remain the same band i was in my rural village, yet my insurance goes up £300. Arse.

[Trumo]

What you probably have to bear in mind is that a category rating in one place is not the same as the equivalent in another. An average part of a large city is still rated a higher risk than a relatively crappy part of some town or village in the sticks.

[VladimirIlyich]

You probably live in an area with a high rate of ambulance chasers mate. When they have a crash, both cars with a single driver in suddenly have three passengers in each car with whiplash when the insurance forms go in, and before you know it £2.5k for each passenger. Also people who aren't really injured think "fuck it, I may as well milk this" and make a claim anyway. You also probably live in an area with a high proportion of uninsured drivers which means your insurer gets stung if you have a prang which isn't your fault. It's shite but you get penalised because some of the people in your community are cunts.

 

I had a look at that postcode thing Trumo put up and it seems Runcorn is classified as a C, we must have a better class of scum than Chadderton.

 

Not the part where I live!

 

I was being asked 50 quid a month for a 12 year old focus but eventually got it down to 36 by including my sister but having to go third party fire and theft and knock off all the extras.

Been driving for 25 years and no accidents too.

[LEF]

I had the same issue today. Been with Prudential for the last 2 years and have 3 years no claims. After year 1 it droped by about £120. This year they wanted an extra £250.

 

In the end Swift cover was the cheapest option. I got that for around the same as i am paying this year for the same covarge.

 

Hopefully it will stay a similar level as i am looking a changing my car around September time.

 

I dont envey young drivers trying to get their first car. Im 32 and am still paying £720.