Exactly this, however I was unaware of the time limit between cancelling insurance and re insuring.
Insurance Companies
- Thread starter Pauly
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- insurance quotes
There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to insurance companies. Our second vehicle is a Yeti, we’d been with Quote Me Happy (Aviva) for years & they were unbeaten on price until last year, when for no reason the price went up by 50%. Our camper is with Aplan(Howdens) so I rang them & got a good price to insure the Yeti. The renewal for the Yeti has just come through from Howden for next year & is 50% up on last year, I’ve done the usual online comparisons & got a quote from AXA for £220. Phoned Howdens and they tell me that in order to get me the best price, they’ve changed underwriters from KGM to..you guessed it AXA, and their price is £335. I told them that AXA are quoting like for like online at £220 and they said, “take it”. So I have, goodbye & thanks for all the fish.
Our home insurance has been with Bradford & Bingley for the last couple of years. Just before it was due for renewal, they contacted me and said they are unable to offer me a renewal quote. No explanation. I rang to ask why, the clerk said they didn't know and had no way of finding out, only that they couldn't offer me a quote. They stressed that this did not mean I had been refused insurance or had a policy cancelled, so it will not affect future premiums with other companies - only that they are unable to insure us. Weird.
Mrs had that with Aviva on her BMW i3 EV. About 2 weeks before renewel, got a letter saying they were unable to offer a renewel. Didn't provide us with any explanation
I've just had a quote from Howden and it was reasonable at £479 including personal injury, The only concern was the van is not insured if it's not parked on my drive whilst at my home address. So if i have a delivery or need to park on the neighbours drive due to having some work done at home etc it's not insured. I do find this very odd but i cqlled them again and they did confirm this. It is okay if it's parked on a friends drive away from my address. Although its parked on my drive 99.9% of the time there is always that 0.01 % it could go walkies, not sure if all insurers are the same?
It’s another nonsense way to charge more money.
Parked on your driveway with no security is free but a gated, fenced carp park with CCTV is an extra £100.
Years ago I moved house.
Unsurprisingly my car insurance went up, with the insurer telling me it was a highter crime area.
Except it wasn't. The publicly available data on the local police website showed it was lower for all forms of autocrime, and less recorded RTA's in the new postcode area.
I rang the insurer back and confronted them with this and they went "oh" and "ah" and quickly put the premium back to the old figure.
Making a false representation in order to make a pecuniary gain is nothing short of fraud, and anyone else trying it would end up before a court yet insurers, solicitors, estate agents and all the other useless dross that leeches off the back of society seem to get away with it time and time again.
Unsurprisingly my car insurance went up, with the insurer telling me it was a highter crime area.
Except it wasn't. The publicly available data on the local police website showed it was lower for all forms of autocrime, and less recorded RTA's in the new postcode area.
I rang the insurer back and confronted them with this and they went "oh" and "ah" and quickly put the premium back to the old figure.
Making a false representation in order to make a pecuniary gain is nothing short of fraud, and anyone else trying it would end up before a court yet insurers, solicitors, estate agents and all the other useless dross that leeches off the back of society seem to get away with it time and time again.
May years ago, we lived in an area of Manchester that went under the M25 postcode. All our insurances were reasonably priced. After a couple of years at that address the post office decided to split the area up into several separate postcodes, and our bit became M45 instead of M25. We sent out change of address details to every company we had dealings with and forgot about it. A few weeks later we started getting letters from home insurance and vehicle insurance companies saying our premiums were being reduced.
I phoned up the car insurance company to find out why, and they told me that now I lived in a more out-of-town postcode my risk level had been lowered. I didn't argue.
I phoned up the car insurance company to find out why, and they told me that now I lived in a more out-of-town postcode my risk level had been lowered. I didn't argue.
I just went in completely the opposite direction and saved £275. Clear they just play games and see what they can get away with, rather than base it on anything tangible.
I had an Admiral multi car policy when I bought and had my campervan converted. Literally couldn’t get a straight answer from them about anything to do with the conversion so I gave up and went elsewhere in the end
I firmly believe that insurers base their quotes on a customer's ability and potential willingness to pay a particular sum rather than any notional ideas about 'risk.'
You’re right and some insurance bod admitted this in an interview I heard. He called it ‘propensity to spend’ and said if you tick the boxes for the various options (legal, personal injury, protected no claims etc.) then they see you are happy to pay more and that is reflected in prices going forward.
Whereas before I may have had some brand loyalty and if they were close to others I would have stayed just for ease now I move round and just get the cheapest I’m happy with (and don’t tick those optional boxes). Still goes up annually but not as much as just sticking as is (would have been a fifty percent rise this year despite no claim and the vehicles being worth less due to age).
I don't know how you meant this to read but I read it as removing family named drivers doesn't save much.
I would be interested to know how adding a named driver to an existing policy for the odd week compares to adding them for the year but no company will tell me. With cars this has always been very cheap to do, sometimes even free, but with van insurance they won't confirm anything.
It does seem the great unknown.
Last year it cost me £75 to add 2 children on renewal of my Annual policy. NFU could not say what it would cost to add them later in the policy or for temporary cover.
On renewal this year I reverted back to self & spouse only, which brought my premium lower than last year (which was a surprise).
DorisDanbury
Member
Having a few issues with A-plan/Howdens on our 3rd year renewal. Found out we’d been paying £58 a year to protect a £300 excess (yes we should have checked the documents more closely) and after a few questions found us a lower premium with Aviva, brilliant!! Paid the money yesterday, got a phone call today asking whether our van has a cooker in it. No it doesn’t which we specifically told them and Aviva had the model of our conversion in their drop down menu. Oh, not sure whether Aviva will insure you then…..still waiting for a call back and the insurance runs out tomorrow. Not happy.
DorisDanbury
Member
Update…..Aviva won’t insure us so we’re back with Ageas and Howdens will cover the (undisclosed) difference in premium as we were originally quoted £717 (with Ageas) and got that down to £592 (with Aviva)……funnily enough decided not to have excess protect this year.
