Car insurance up 61% 😲

[paulplom]

Got my a4 cab renewal yesterday. £325 last year to £520 this year with Hastings.

Went on go compare and Hastings are still far cheaper. I was getting quotes for over a grand for some fucking reason.

[Aston Martin]

It's only up about 5% but what kind of backhanded shit is this.

[dozeydustman]

I would just shop around. My renewal is coming up so I’ll just Meerkat it as in 27 years of driving only once was the auto renewal within a few quid as the previous year.

Further in advance you take the sign up for the policy,  the cheaper it tends to be so I’ll be looking at next payday, which is middle of Nov, but the current plan finishes 13th December. Tend to save double figures of pounds; quite often if I purchase the day of expiry of the current policy it’s can only be a couple of quid for the year of not more than renewal.

[catsinthewelder]

I've just got the renewal email from Churchill (with some prove you're not a robot bollocks that isn't showing up so I don't know what it is).

Done a bit of comparing the meercats and I can get it down to a little over £240 (with £500 excess).  The downside I'm finding is that the cheaper quotes don't include driving other cars.  If I upgrade to premium cover they do but that's another £60 or so with no other useful benefits.

[Aston Martin]

4 hours ago, dozeydustman said:

I would just shop around. My renewal is coming up so I’ll just Meerkat it as in 27 years of driving only once was the auto renewal within a few quid as the previous year.

Further in advance you take the sign up for the policy,  the cheaper it tends to be so I’ll be looking at next payday, which is middle of Nov, but the current plan finishes 13th December. Tend to save double figures of pounds; quite often if I purchase the day of expiry of the current policy it’s can only be a couple of quid for the year of not more than renewal.

 

I have multicar, so this is easier.

But I'll phone up and say "Hey, what can you do?" And they usually just take off a random amount. 🤷‍♂️ 

[Talbot]

On 01/11/2023 at 08:00, New POD said:

 the fact that having had one crash, she's now less likely to crash again.

This is absolutely not true, in fact the opposite is the truth.  As soon as you have had a crunch, regardless of whether it was your fault or not, you are immedaitely something like 3 times more likely to have another crash in the next few years.  If the crash was your negligent fault (IE driving like a bellend rather than just a skid on some black ice or similar) then apparently you're up to 9 times more likely to have another crash in the following few years.

Any accident, fault or otherwise will increase your premium.  This is why so many people want to avoid going through insurance for minor bumps.

[barrett]

What happened to the law that came in saying insurance companies can't just put your premiums up for no reason? That was a massive thing last year or whenever it was - did they just quietly drop it, or is it simply unenforcable (because if you ring up and plead with them they'll put the price back down?). Seems like it made zero difference considering how much it was in the news at the time.

[garbaldy]

I think insurance companies just make it up as they go along.    I've just sold a car and called up to remove it from my two car classic policy,  after half an hour on the phone I eventually had it sorted with a yes thats done I'll call you back after speaking to underwriters, er okay never had that before.  

30 mins later get called to tell me there's a £6.50 refund on annual policy and also a £35 charge for change to policy,  twats if it didn't have six months left to run I wouldn't have bothered and just let it lapse.  

[Cavcraft]

Mine went from £640 to £700. I asked them why and they just said 'Well, everything's going up, isn't it?' Remarked  that  wasn't a proper answer at all, but they basically just said 'Take it or leave it'.

[motorpunk]

Reinsured the Lotus for the same as last year, reinsured the Fiat for about 40% less than last year (classic policy and I removed legal cover), and the BMW was about 5% more. Haggle and don’t take any shit.

[Rust Collector]

56 minutes ago, barrett said:

What happened to the law that came in saying insurance companies can't just put your premiums up for no reason? That was a massive thing last year or whenever it was - did they just quietly drop it, or is it simply unenforcable (because if you ring up and plead with them they'll put the price back down?). Seems like it made zero difference considering how much it was in the news at the time.

I think it just (predictably) fucked any chance of a big discount by shopping around at renewal time. IIRC the legislation was that renewals couldn't be higher than the price that they'd use to draw new business in, so of course rather than renewals becoming more competitive the prices for new business went up.

[Datsuncog]

22 hours ago, BlankFrank said:

So I suppose we now have to compare the comparison sites too.. 🙃

Yeah, for whatever reason I've consistently found that Confused.com gives me a slightly cheaper car insurance price than either GoCompare, CompareTheMarket or MoneySupermarket.

It's usually exactly the same providers returned, in the same order, but it usually comes in at £10 cheaper across the board via Confused.

Weird.

I've also found that playing about with the voluntary excess can yield surprising results. One year I saved £30 by reducing the voluntary excess to £0 (usually I set it at £400 or £600). Doesn't make a lot of sense, but there y'go.

Not looking forward to my April renewal for the Corolla; I've already set aside half as much again as I normally do to cover it, and I'm still not certain it'll be enough...

[sierraman]

2 hours ago, Cavcraft said:

Mine went from £640 to £700. I asked them why and they just said 'Well, everything's going up, isn't it?' Remarked  that  wasn't a proper answer at all, but they basically just said 'Take it or leave it'.

Should charge them an admin fee for having to ring up, that’s another bullshit thing that they love adding on. 

[Ghosty]

Classic prices holding at 150/year for the sedan. Mum's EF is about the same.

Hatch and Cav stand me a grand a year between them, though I'm going to put it on classic at renewal in April as with all the mods and it off daily duties, it needs better cover, and it'll save me £400 or so.

Used to be able to insure anything I wanted for about £3-400, but it's more like £550 now.

[Sham]

When I asked mine why it had almost doubled, they said "cost of parts".

When I said "not for my car, you'd write it off if the repairs cost £2k".

They're just taking advantage of the fact people are having to swallow rises in other bills, there's a lot of that going on at the moment.

[bunglebus]

4 hours ago, Talbot said:

This is absolutely not true, in fact the opposite is the truth.  As soon as you have had a crunch, regardless of whether it was your fault or not, you are immedaitely something like 3 times more likely to have another crash in the next few years.  If the crash was your negligent fault (IE driving like a bellend rather than just a skid on some black ice or similar) then apparently you're up to 9 times more likely to have another crash in the following few years.

Any accident, fault or otherwise will increase your premium.  This is why so many people want to avoid going through insurance for minor bumps.

Annoying when twice you have a parked car crashed into and have to declare it for the next 5 years through absolutely no fault of your own though

[Mrcento]

57 minutes ago, Sham said:

When I asked mine why it had almost doubled, they said "cost of parts".

When I said "not for my car, you'd write it off if the repairs cost £2k".

They're just taking advantage of the fact people are having to swallow rises in other bills, there's a lot of that going on at the moment.

That's exactly it.

Of course, there's 3rd party damage/injury risk, that's understandable... (cost of parts for cars you may hit is up, so indirectly, they're not wrong on that) But low value cars, They're going to write off even with a scratch on the bumper, and the pay out (with the larger compulsory excesses they are now forcing on people) are going to result in a payout significantly less than the policy cost to take out... Meanwhile, a 20 grand car that may well cost the insurers 8k in repairs costs the same, probably actually less, despite carrying a bigger direct financial risk to them.

And i've clocked something very, very sinister in the pricing. The gouging runs far, far deeper than i think any of us realise.

They know when cars are up for sale, where (i.e private or dealer) and how much they are, and adjust the insurance price accordingly. I strongly suspect when a vehicle reg is uploaded on a sales portal, it flags on the Insurers database and the price it's up for and method of sale (i,e Dealer or private) adjusts the 'risk', i.e if it's a cheaper private sale it's a higher risk.

You can take 3 identical on paper cars, 1 you know isn't for sale (i.e a neighbours), 1 for sale at a dealer and 1 up for sale privately, all the same make, model, trim level, year, colour, no accident reports flagging on any site etc, get quotes on all 3 and you will get 3 very different prices, despite all being the same vehicles that would have the same repair costs.

The one not for sale will be cheapest. (Say £550)

The one at the dealer will be a little more (£640)

The 'cheap' one will be significantly more expensive. (£890)

And if you get a quote for the make, model, trim, age etc without using a reg number, the price will be somewhere in between the dealer and private sale car. (£770ish)

I can only assume they are thinking the price = risk factor as a cheaper car more likely to be driven with less care than a car somebody has paid 3k more for at a dealer, or the price = condition. There's no other reason for price difference on the same vehicles on paper.

There's something up for sale i'm strongly considering, and they're actually giving me reasonable prices for it..... Seemingly the reason being it's up at a price significantly higher than their (falsely low) estimation if you let it fill in vale automatically on some comparison sites,. so must be triggering it as some pristine babied example.

Meanwhile i had to say no to something i wanted a few days back because they wanted £1300 to insure it, whilst the identical age and trim level car at a specialist dealer down south that was 3k more expensive, they were happy to quote £740 for.