I’ve never been much of a fan of insurance companies. They pump your premium up for no apparent reason. They pluck quotes out of thin air and can conveniently slash hundreds of pounds off the price if you say you got a cheaper quote elsewhere (which means they were ripping you off in the first place).
With these snowy and icy conditions I’m sure they will be in receipt of a fair amount of claims but it’s often a nightmare and many an insurance company will do anything to get out of paying up. If you’ve seen the film Saw VI, this is the precursor to lots of insurance company executives meeting brutal deaths.
When price comparison web sites first came about, Confused.com was one of the leaders for car insurance and since then I’ve used their site pretty much exclusively. The site itself is easy to use. You can see your quote history nicely so when you’re editing your quotes to see what makes a difference in dropping the premium you have a nice display of all of them.
I logged on there today as my car insurance is due to expire in early January. Actually no, it’s due to automatically renew at their quoted price if I don’t do anything. This seems to be the latest scam that companies employ to make more money: they rely on the apathy of people to go and look for cheaper prices as well as the knowledge that people forget about things like car insurance and maintenance contracts until it’s too late and it’s automatically renewed.
I’m with Admiral whose renewal quote had gone up by a staggering 15% from £407 to £467 (with a £250 excess) which I thought was a bit of a cheek given that I have made no claims, had none made against me and have 11 years no claims bonus. The only difference in my circumstances compared with last time I renewed is that I’m a year older and my car’s worth a bit less, but after going on Confused.com to search for cheaper prices I was quite relieved by the renewal quote from Admiral.
Out of the 86 quotes returned by their search and apart from elephant.co.uk (who are Admiral under a different name) all the prices were over £816. Last year most quotes were around the £550 mark, so the increase on the whole is quite dramatic. Here are a few examples from companies you will have heard of:
- Swinton – £869 + £550 excess
- Kwik Fit – £896 + £550 excess
- HSBC Insurance – £933 + £600 excess
- RAC – £933 + £600 excess
- Cornhill – £942 + £650 excess
- Endsleigh – £1035 + £620 excess
- AA – £1040 + £550 excess
- Tesco – £1337 + £500 excess
- Marks & Spencer – £1622 + £500 excess
- Lloyds – £1863 + £500 excess
Some of these companies – Kwik Fit for instance – took the piss by offering a free MoT. For the increase in price compared with my renewal quote I could take my car and have 8 MoT tests, or if you compare the Lloyds quote I could have 26 MoTs for that price difference. So they can fuck off, right now.
I was a bit disappointed to see how many big name insurers were no longer on Confused.com or wouldn’t provide a quote. Even Admiral wouldn’t provide one, or Esure (who I have used before). It’s also remarkably convenient how all quotes appear to have ballooned upwards.
Anyway, I went to Comparethemarket.com to see if they were any different. They were, but the quotes were still obscene. Elephant.co.uk was once again by far the most reasonable and in this case was £5 cheaper than my renewal quote. All of the others were silly money again with equally silly excesses: pretty much the same companies in the same order as Confused.com. Perhaps they use the same quoting engine because the same companies as before wouldn’t provide a quote.
Go on, compare this little bastard
I believe the way insurance works is outright wrong. I know they’re a business and have to satisfy shareholder interests, but it’s compulsory to have car insurance and therefore they have you over a barrel.
They “try it on” by quoting fantasy figures in the hope that you can’t be arsed shopping around or don’t realise you can knock them down. There are no saints on this, they all do it.
When I first took my policy out with Admiral I had a load of trouble with them. You see, 4 or 5 of the companies on Confused.com are actually Admiral, and I had been putting in fictional quotes to see what effect a claim would have on the price. This led them to believe, despite me having provided proof of no claims, that once I had taken out my policy sans claims I was lying about my circumstances because I had submitted a request to some of their sister companies for a quote with one claim on it.
A telephone battle ensued between myself and a varying selection of jobsworths at their Swansea call centre, who kept telling me I had made a claim when clearly I had not and then at the end of each conversation tried to sell me some other policy or product. Eventually following a stroppy letter this was resolved.
Just thinking back over that reminded me of the F Parkinson contract bidding scam. They arranged for other firms to put in high bids for local authority projects to make their own bids look cheap. This is what these insurance companies do: they spawn a load of internet only, women only, one-armed transsexual muslim lesbian only “sister companies” to make their main quote look better.
I’m probably going to just let the Admiral renewal roll on and renew itself, since looking at these “simples” price comparison sites I’m going to struggle to find anywhere else remotely competitive.
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I used compare the market and was delighted with the result. As I have a soft-top car though not all the quotes come up on the site itself – but then they start ringing you up – and if you’re prepared to go through being put through to other companies and spending a while giving the same information again (they can’t pass it over for data protection apparently even with consent) I reduced my insurance to just under £350 with a £150 excess. Privilege had upped it by about £80 to £450 with a £450 excess (a confusing system whereby you have to have a £250 excess with a softtop and the £200 was voluntary – it wasn’t clear when you were asking for the quote).
I’ve always changed my insurance at least every couple of years as the premium gets hiked up enormously if you don’t (often to a comment from call centre workers that they wondered why I was bothering calling if I already had such a low quote). But beware if you do this because you need to keep copies of your no claims history – Privilege kept saying it was 5 for me as that’s the maximum they record. Fortunately I had copies of no claims proving I had a much better record than that. I still resent paying such a big amount of money just in case – I’ve paid thousands and thousands over the years and never ever had a claim. They justify the increases in premium as your protection in case uninsured drivers crash into you – it’s hardly a fair system.
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Yeah, my dad always told me when I’d just learned to drive that I should keep records of everything like that and I do (and have needed it in the past, too).
Trouble is these days these companies ask for the actual renewal letter rather than a copy, so you can’t keep the proper documents.
I’ve tended to hop insurers too: this year is the first I’ve been with Admiral – prior to that I was with ESure and before that on a company fleet policy. My concern this time is that every company on these – apart from the one I’m with – wanted more than double what I paid last time!
It’s a bit of a murky, dishonest industry really. I don’t like it at all. Loads of smarmy salespeople trying to pull the wool over your eyes to bag a fat commission. The companies themselves try to shirk paying out by pulling out technicalities if they can.
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As long as you keep a photocopy though you’re fine. It really was a palarva though trying to prove my no claims – you think when they’re sharing information they could share something useful at the same time – such as your no claims history!
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My insurance company (well I ditched them in October) put my premium up in October after I had just gained 4 years no claims, I was furious. But then More Th>n offered me a a quote £50 less than my 2008 renewal quote with my previous insurer and a lower excess. Some of the quotes I got off the search engines were scandalous and I don’t understand why anyone would be mad enough to pay. I had one with a premium of £800 and a £3,000 excess, so fuck them. I’ve only got a little 1.0 Nissan.
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Yes – that is ridiculous. I drove on my mum’s insurance until I was 25 because I couldn’t afford the premiums and they were much lower then. No wonder we have so many uninsured drivers on the road – the fines they get when caught are cheaper than going down the legal route.
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Try money supermarket.com as I’ve been through a similar process this week. My quote from Hastings was up despite like you Phil not having any claims and a good no claims bonus and I was able to get a cheaper quote.
What annoys me is in business you try and look after your existing customers, not in the insurance world where you give existing customers quotes higher then what they are paying already and force them to go else where.
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Just tried that site and the quotes were £785+
I find it wierd that all companies are suddenly charging a lot more for me. I reckon it’s either some secret climate change policy imposed on them, or a price fixing cartel.
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MERRY XMAS TRAVELLER SCUM!
TRAVELLERS who moved onto land in Preesall have been hit with a court order.
Council chiefs have secured the injunction against the travellers who have moved onto the site off Lancaster Road.
Neighbours were horrified to see caravans being taken onto the land last month.
Now, Wyre Council has secured an injunction from the courts which prohibits additional hardcore and other materials being brought onto the land until permission for residential development has been granted via the local authority’s planning process.
The injunction states the occupants cannot conduct business of any kind on the site, bring additional caravans and mobile homes or park anymore cars on the land.
It is effective until January 15 when the matter will be heard again at court.
Fylde Council issued a stop work notice to a group of travellers who moved on to a field off Fairfield Road, in the Hardhorn area near Poulton, last month.
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Not very good news though – they aren’t made to reverse what they’ve already done illegally – they get to keep that until (if) they lose their planning application. Really travellers who deliberately do all these things on a bank holiday weekend ought to be made to rip them up until they have permission to put them down again – then they’d stop flouting our planning laws quite so easily.
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I am sick of the way these minority groups get away with this sort of thing, I just hope the next connservative government redresses this imbalance created by labour and they should repeal that odious equality law which discrimnates against men and white (indigenous British) as well.
But under DC I cant see that happening.
Next year I want to vote for a party that I can believe in, i.e. conservative, I dont want to have to vote BNP again.
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On an unrelated note
Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!!
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and you TB!
This will Marsden’s last one as an mp, lol
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Hey that’s a great thought I never thought of that, merry xmas Harold.
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I will raise my glass of wine to it tonight, all the best TB!
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