The grumpy thread

[wuvvum]

  On 08/04/2025 at 16:34, BorniteIdentity said:

I think most people on here will know this as 'Fronting'.  Those involved in insurance fronting may face criminal charges under the Fraud Act 2006 or The Insurance Act 2015, as it constitutes fraud by misrepresentation or false information.  

It is a seriously, seriously bad idea.  We all know how much insurance companies want to avoid coughing up - and this is the sort of thing they delight in.

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I think it's OK if you declare yourself as the main driver but you add a relative on as an additional named driver - in some circumstances that can help lower the premium, although usually for very young drivers.  The problem comes when you're insured as an additional driver but you're actually the main driver of the vehicle.

[BorniteIdentity]

  On 08/04/2025 at 16:50, wuvvum said:

I think it's OK if you declare yourself as the main driver but you add a relative on as an additional named driver - in some circumstances that can help lower the premium, although usually for very young drivers.  The problem comes when you're insured as an additional driver but you're actually the main driver of the vehicle.

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Apologies if I got the wrong end of the wrong stick - I thought the poster was suggesting you be a named driver on your mother's car etc.

But yes - that stuff is fine.  My ex-wife is still insured on my vehicles as it brings it down.  We're still legally married so nothing fraudulent; she's just not driven one in years!

 

[wuvvum]

  On 08/04/2025 at 16:48, loserone said:

Sorry to hear of the hungry caterpillar incident.  

 

You may find the premium increases a fair bit but you will get through it again.  I've not been claim free for long

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I hope so, but fleet policies like mine are getting harder to come by, and a number of people with similar policies have had insurers refuse to renew.  Worst comes to the worst, a few of the fleet could probably be put on a multi-car classic policy (I might even be able to squeeze the Rover 75 on there), then I'd just need to have one modern under a separate policy for daily use.

[Remspoor]

  On 07/04/2025 at 20:13, IronStar said:

Bravo. Another day. Another fuck you.

It passed the technical inspection with advisory that brakes are still not 100% right. That’s it then? Well, no.

It’s been more than two months since the registration lapsed, so it needs new plates (I’m yet to understand why do you need new plates if rego expires over 2 months, but you don’t need to change it otherwise). The inspection station is not in Belgrade county, so they can’t take care of that, so I need to drive 60 kilometers there and 60 back to pick up 5 pieces of paper. Okay, I’ll drive.

I get there, I take the paperwork, drive back to Belgrade, wait in a queue just to be told - nope, sorry m8, you need another paper.

This car was, on paper, owned by my late aunt. I bought it off my cousin who inherited it. I have the inheritance paperwork. But, nope, that’s not enough, he needs to go to the tax authority, in person, and ask for a paper that confirms he owes no tax on the inheritance of the car (which he doesn’t as her son), give me the paper that says 0RSD owed, so I can pass it to the police station to get the new plates issued.

Oh, because that’s not enough, insurance policy on the car needs to be cancelled. Yes, you guessed it, it’s not electronic, and I need to drive another 120km to take it back so they can void it in person.

They can check if I owe the tax before issuing me the plates and registration sticker, but that very same fucking system can’t confirm if there’s outstanding tax before my ownership.

Bonus question - why is there even a tax on a sale of a used car? Did you not levy the tax when it was first sold/imported, why are you taxing every subsequent sale? 

Fuck Serbian bureaucracy, fuck the paperwork, fuck everything. I am so fed up with this country and all the insanity that comes with it. This is literally insane. 

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Oh my. and I thought Spain was the King in bureaucracy.

[myglaren]

  On 08/04/2025 at 16:26, comfortablynumb said:

Not sure you can get away with that now, the main driver is supposed to be the main policy holder iirc.

I do know my mum's neighbours had serious problems with an accident a few years ago, where their son was driving their car, as a named driver, was involved in a non-fault accident, and despite him having his own car, insured in his name, the insurers tried to claim the parents car was actually his.

Nearly ended in court, they backed down at the last moment. This could be insurers just being arses tho

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I was intending insuring my coming Mazda 6 in my son's name as he is now the main driver, uses it daily for work, taking his girlfriend to and from work, buggering off to Scotland quite often.  I get to use it once a fortnight usually.  It lives at his house too.

This was as due to my age my insurance is increasing rapidly and hoped to save a few quid.

 

Insurance said nothing when the Civic was wiped out just over a year ago.  He was driving home from work, Volvo slid into him in the snow.  All on dashcam.

[barefoot]

Is ncb relevant on a trade policy though? It's not on a classic one. I bumped my camper recently and the renewal said, 'at fault, ncd affected, amount of ncd - nil'.

[comfortablynumb]

Think you're ok with that @myglaren, but I've had situations like that where I've had to register the car to the main driver too, the insurance wasn't happy with it being registered to someone else.

Case in.point- one of my range rover classics is on long-term loan to one of my sons, and his insurers insisted he was the registered keeper, although he doesn't own it and never will ( despite his best efforts!)

 

Also when my son in law needed a stopgap car in a hurry, after his Freelander caught light, his boss offered to loan him a ford fusion.

We actually ended up buying it, because his insurers wouldn't cover it either

 

Not sure what difference it makes? After all the v5 states in big letters that it's not proof of ownership. Maybe @JJ0063 could enlighten me in his professional capacity?

Edited April 8 by comfortablynumb

[Wibble]

  On 08/04/2025 at 17:48, comfortablynumb said:

Think you're ok with that @myglaren, but I've had situations like that where I've had to register the car to the main driver too, the insurance wasn't happy with it being registered to someone else.

Case in.point- one of my range rover classics is on long-term loan done of my sons, and his insurers insisted he was the registered keeper, although he doesn't own it and never will ( despite his best efforts!)

 

Also when my son in law needed a stopgap car in a hurry, after his Freelander caught light, his boss offered to loan him a ford fusion.

We actually ended up buying it, because his insurers wouldn't cover it either

 

Not sure what difference it makes? After all the v5 states in big letters that it's not proof of ownership. Maybe @JJ0063 could enlighten me in his professional capacity?

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I’ve come across this nonsense before too. Probably nearly 20 years ago when wife needed a car when her Kia went bang. Quickly cleaned the Senator which had been sleeping for a couple of years and put it through an MOT but her insurers insisted on it being registered in her name, adding another keeper to the list, so it now says 5, which is also annoying because DVLA messed up when we moved and treated it as a new keeper instead of just change of address. Should only be 3, company that bought it new, keeper before me(who bought it from the company on his retirement) and me.

They probably have some stats suggesting your more likely to be careful if you own it🤷🏻‍♂️

[hairnet]

  On 08/04/2025 at 16:26, comfortablynumb said:

Not sure you can get away with that now, the main driver is supposed to be the main policy holder iirc.

I do know my mum's neighbours had serious problems with an accident a few years ago, where their son was driving their car, as a named driver, was involved in a non-fault accident, and despite him having his own car, insured in his name, the insurers tried to claim the parents car was actually his.

Nearly ended in court, they backed down at the last moment. This could be insurers just being arses tho

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when someone backed into the 108 the ins tried to make this out to me on renewal because on renewal when the details came through it had commuting set as yes - even tho ive not commuted in a car for 15 years - the bump also happened on a saturday in technically a foreign country so unlikely to be travelling to work in it

but at the bottom on the details where it confirmed name policy number what type of cover 

the last line had on it - comprehensive sd+p excluding commuting

they got told to FRO sharpish and also to check the mileage between mots which was just less than 4k

so they backed down mostly quickly

dont let them fyck you about (im also a named driver on a policy that has never seen an issue)

 

[iainrcz]

I sanded down and repainted our kitchen radiator ages ago, just never got round to the end cap things.

So today I sanded them down and degreased them, sprayed them with some appliance white spray paint.

 

Which immediately went crinkly,  because of course it did.

[Talbot]

  On 08/04/2025 at 12:55, wuvvum said:

Well fuck.  Fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck.

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Assuming you can just repair your own car with parts from a breaker somewhere, how bad was the damage to the other car?  Is it potentially repairable (bumper etc.) or more than that?

You may well find that your insurance doesn't actually go up that much anyway.  Is there any grey area over the fault here?

[loserone]

  On 07/04/2025 at 06:37, loserone said:

PayPal.

 

Had a friend's and family transaction reversed a few weeks back as an unauthorised card payment.  They took the payment from my account immediately.

They've now closed the case and charged £14 for the privilege of not getting the money.

 

Absolutely fuck PayPal.

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Case closed as far as PayPal are concerned, they didn't get their money and the other account is suspended, so I am THE SELLER and will take the hit on their fees.

 

I know and trust the sender, and [circumstances which aren't for here] but they are out of pocket too and it's not their fault in the slightest. 

 

Can I just reiterate: fuck PayPal.

 

[wuvvum]

  On 09/04/2025 at 13:28, Talbot said:

Assuming you can just repair your own car with parts from a breaker somewhere, how bad was the damage to the other car?  Is it potentially repairable (bumper etc.) or more than that?

You may well find that your insurance doesn't actually go up that much anyway.  Is there any grey area over the fault here?

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No, 100% my fault.  The other car is a write off - I hit the side so both doors and wings are fucked, curtain airbag went off etc.  It was a 2012 Polo so wouldn't take much to write it off.

[Talbot]

  On 09/04/2025 at 14:52, wuvvum said:

No, 100% my fault.  The other car is a write off - I hit the side so both doors and wings are fucked, curtain airbag went off etc.  It was a 2012 Polo so wouldn't take much to write it off.

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Or maybe to pay the market value of the car to the owner to prevent it going down as an insurance claim?  What is a 2012 Polo worth? (I have no idea)

[wuvvum]

Probably about £3K, maybe slightly less.  Unfortunately I don't have a spare £3K knocking around at the moment.  It's a moot point anyway, it's already been reported to the insurers on both sides so it's in their hands now.

[Talbot]

  On 09/04/2025 at 15:16, wuvvum said:

Probably about £3K, maybe slightly less.  Unfortunately I don't have a spare £3K knocking around at the moment.  It's a moot point anyway, it's already been reported to the insurers on both sides so it's in their hands now.

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Reporting to insurers and making a claim are two different things... you can report it but still make an "out of insurance" settlement.  Doesn't sound like you're in a position to do that though, so indeed it's a bit moot.

Sounds like a bit of a shitty situation...

[Zelandeth]

The M25 can get in the fscking sea.

102 miles done on it today, and that's 102 too many.

What an utterly hateful piece of road.  That sodding grooved concrete surface on a bunch of it is just the icing on the cake and makes an already unpleasant experience bloody torturous.

[Popsicle]

Went to pop out earlier in the couriering caddy, fired it up and got a whiff of diesel. Thought no more as it had the injectors replaced on Tuesday and it had behaved perfectly on a run out to Wrexham on Wednesday, so I set off and glanced in the mirror at the top of our street and saw it gushing out.

Oh bollocks, there goes a few gallons of it down the street.

Fucking thing.....

[robt100]

  On 10/04/2025 at 16:56, Popsicle said:

Went to pop out earlier in the couriering caddy, fired it up and got a whiff of diesel. Thought no more as it had the injectors replaced on Tuesday and it had behaved perfectly on a run out to Wrexham on Wednesday, so I set off and glanced in the mirror at the top of our street and saw it gushing out.

Oh bollocks, there goes a few gallons of it down the street.

Fucking thing.....

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Any idea what did it? Might have not put a pipe on fully after putting on the new injectors??

[Popsicle]

  On 10/04/2025 at 19:07, robt100 said:

Any idea what did it? Might have not put a pipe on fully after putting on the new injectors??

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The return pipe by the diesel cooler had unclipped itself. So nowhere near where the mechanics had been on Tuesday. I got it up on the ramps on our drive and pushed it back together, but it would pop back out with very little resistance. Rang the mechanic up and popped it round to them. He said the joint was just worn out, put a new one on for me and seems to be holding up so far.

Just one of those things I reckon.

I filled it up when I got back home yesterday and topped it back up after this - £29.37 worth of diesel down the drain ☹️.

[reb]

FUCK YOU TREES

[wuvvum]

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

[artdjones]

  On 11/04/2025 at 20:46, wuvvum said:

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

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Give it time, it will take less of your thinking time every day, then hopefully one day it drops into proper perspective.

[Wibble]

  On 11/04/2025 at 20:46, wuvvum said:

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

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Completely understandable. It just takes time. I’ve only ever been involved in one significant accident, when we were rear ended whilst on holiday:

Both our kids were taken to hospital, they were ok but traumatised and bangs to heads and I drove over 400 miles home in a hire car with constant anxiety every time we had to slow down, keeping an eye on the rear view mirror.

It gets easier eventually, although I’m still slightly paranoid and very conscious of what’s coming up behind me.

Everyone makes mistakes, don’t beat yourself up. I called the guy who hit us everything under the sun and my youngest had a right go at him, whilst crying his eyes out, bless him. I ended up apologising to the guy, acknowledging we all fuck up.

[Popsicle]

  On 11/04/2025 at 20:46, wuvvum said:

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

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Like others have said, its understandable how you feel. Your mind will be running at a thousand miles an hour, analysing everything that you could/should have done. It will also give way to intrusive thoughts and images, offering far worse scenarios than what actually happened. I ain't no doctor/psychologist but it sounds like a dose of PTSD, which is pretty normal after what you've been through.

Try not to be too hard on yourself, take things easy and try to occupy yourself. Time is the great healer for these incidents, but get yourself booked in with a doc to be checked over. They'll give far better advice than a bunch of middle aged shite car pervs on the internet.

[Mrcento]

  On 11/04/2025 at 20:46, wuvvum said:

Not been sleeping properly since the accident on Tuesday.  A combination of anger at myself, residual stress over the accident itself, worry about the implications on my insurance renewal and consequently the future of the fleet, and my brain coming up with scenarios as to how the accident could have been way worse than it was.  It's a vicious circle as the more tired I get the more anxious I get and therefore the less sleep I get.  Hopefully it'll fade with time but it's been a very long time since something affected me this badly and I'm not really sure how to deal with it.

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It's normal. It's basically a form of shock. I was the same when i had an accident about 5 years ago that wrote my Vectra off. Overriding thing is just plain anger at yourself, even if it was a combination of a hundred things at once, you think that if you hadn't let even 1 of them be an issue you'd not have had the incident, you chew over every little detail on how it happened, how you didn't see x or y, what else was going on at the time, what you were thinking about, where you were looking, the location, the car, every little thing and replay it a million times over thinking what you could have done better, and wear yourself down. But time does help and you realise once the shock wears off, beating yourself up doesn't undo what happened, the only way to react in time is to control the controllables in future and take it as a lesson.

Fwiw, i don't know if it'll be reassuring or not, but 1 accident on insurance i've found didn't change things too much. Obviously premiums do go up (and the most annoying thing is having to declare it on every quote for 5 years) but i found it didn't hammer me to the extent i thought it would, i was expecting my premiums at the time after the accident to near enough double and be closer to a teenagers 1st policy given i was 11 years no claims and got the majority of it wiped by the claim, but in reality it only went up about 15ish% for the first year, and a little bit of snooping to see the effect it had if i never had the accident showed  that even some of that was just premiums in general going up, realistically 11 years NCB and a clean record v 3 years NCB and an accident claim actually made my 11 years NCB feel massively undervalued given how little it would have saved me, by the time i'd added another year on to 4 years NCB the difference was pretty negligible again. About £40 a year more.

[wuvvum]

  On 11/04/2025 at 21:26, Wibble said:

Everyone makes mistakes, don’t beat yourself up. I called the guy who hit us everything under the sun and my youngest had a right go at him, whilst crying his eyes out, bless him. I ended up apologising to the guy, acknowledging we all fuck up.

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Yeah, that's pretty much what happened with the guy I hit, he was extremely pissed off to start with (quite understandably) but soon calmed down and apologised. 

  On 11/04/2025 at 23:09, Mrcento said:

 i was 11 years no claims and got the majority of it wiped by the claim, but in reality it only went up about 15ish% for the first year, and a little bit of snooping to see the effect it had if i never had the accident showed  that even some of that was just premiums in general going up, realistically 11 years NCB and a clean record v 3 years NCB and an accident claim actually made my 11 years NCB feel massively undervalued given how little it would have saved me, by the time i'd added another year on to 4 years NCB the difference was pretty negligible again. About £40 a year more.

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I have 10 years' NCB on this policy, but I haven't really noticed much difference in premiums compared to when I only had 4 years, so you might be right.  Not sure how much of my NCB this is going to wipe out though, I'm not sure exactly how they calculate these things.

[Metal Guru]

  On 12/04/2025 at 00:43, wuvvum said:

Yeah, that's pretty much what happened with the guy I hit, he was extremely pissed off to start with (quite understandably) but soon calmed down and apologised. 

I have 10 years' NCB on this policy, but I haven't really noticed much difference in premiums compared to when I only had 4 years, so you might be right.  Not sure how much of my NCB this is going to wipe out though, I'm not sure exactly how they calculate these things.

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You should pay the extra for protected no claims . You can normally have 2 claims  in 3 years without losing it.

Having said that, my wife had a claim (her fault), in her second year of having insurance in her name, and although the insurer who paid the claim put the premium up a bit, on renewal there were plenty of others lower.

[chadders]

I've found keeping busy is the best way so I don't have time to dwell on it in the day and I fall asleep pretty quickly as I'm knackered.

I'm sure that there's plenty of work that can be done on your fleet, especially given the good weather.

[MikeR]

  On 08/04/2025 at 16:50, wuvvum said:

I think it's OK if you declare yourself as the main driver but you add a relative on as an additional named driver - in some circumstances that can help lower the premium, although usually for very young drivers.  The problem comes when you're insured as an additional driver but you're actually the main driver of the vehicle.

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Our car setup was like that , it was the wife's car till I retired , then she gave up driving to a great degree and I was a named driver for a year , 2 years ago I became the main driver as she no longer drove unless in an emergency , it made no difference to the cost but its bit more honest about what driver is behind the wheel ..