Insurance time again

Eminently sensible as you say and a bloody nice little extra too.

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FYP!

Well after sending numerous bloody pictures and getting the run around from adrian fux, I got a letter stating that their figure is IT, tough shit, fuck offski or see a lawyer. I have no intention of them ever getting my business again and if I get advertising I'll forward it to the OIC to deal with. They know already not to bother me with ads so if they start I am taking none of it. I thought customers were supposed to get good service.

The incident he was involved in would have been many times that, but his car being written off wouldn’t have been far off.

My hope was that it won’t be beaten in the future.

Wife had her first insurance policy with them and they refused to fight her corner when another driver hit her car in tesco. Made her pay her excess for the repairs saying she'd get it back once they'd claimed 50:50 with the other driver (who backed into her in a mk1 Disco so had no damage to claim for) but she never got it back and eventually gave up trying. They were cheap but not worth the trouble.

Just had a stressful couple of hours on and off with Insurance.

I called my current provider to get a price for changing the car and was quoted just under £100 to change which after taking the £15 fee off worked out at the equivalent of £1,100 a year, they wanted to increase the total excess from £500 to £850 and insisted on a tracker (which is does have as std so that's OK). I'd had a couple of quotes for £900-950 with £500-700 excess, so asked how much I'd get back and was pleasantly surprised that it was £290. I cancelled.

When I tried to progress the lowest quote it went up to £1150 when I went through to the website and the second one crashed. So I called them and their system is down, suggested I call back after 6pm and hopefully it will be back up, but I needed to make sure they wouldn't have an issue with is having an accessory fitted so it's cutting it all a bit fine. Land Rover offer 7 days insurance, so I called them and they wanted £1,475 for the year.....

Tried another comparison website that thankfully had all my details from November and it came back with two under £800. Completed the quote for the one that looked the best, dropping the total excess to £500 and adding in the enhanced courtesy car and it only went up to £839. So I called them and spoke to a really helpful guy who checked and confirmed the steps were OK and wouldn't increase the cost, but he's add them to the policy to make sure I was well covered.

So mildly stressful for a while, not helped by trying to fit work calls in, but all good in the end which is rare and welcome.

Yes, unless you fit into a neat little box, insurance shopping is an arse. I hate the fact that they alter stuff when you go off the comparison site too.

I have just cancelled my TVR insurance and I am getting £66 back from including cancellation fee to end October which is about right for three full months.

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My dad always said that if you can afford to pay a bit extra, go via a "proper" broker rather than deal direct or over the internet

Had the renewal through for the Golf, it's gone up from £540 to £650.

I did a check on a couple of sites Lindsay was already registered with and the best price from someone I'd consider using, was £620. I did increase the annual mileage to 20,000, which might have pushed up the renewal but it was on 15,000 anyway.

I put all the details into Gocompare as they're still doing the £250 excess insurance and it came back with £570, so the same company we're with now that was £620 through the other two search engines.

So not too bad in the end.

The Qashqai's has just come through from Churchill. It's gone up from £300 to £400 so they are getting booted. 33% increase in one year? They're having a laugh. A quick check with the Meerkats and there are plenty of offers in the £300 region.

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TBH that sounds like quite a bit to me.

Are you stuck with the car in Italy now ("working from home" even if it's not strictly home) , or will you come back and self-isolate for 14 days?

Huh? The policy costs over £500 per annum, yet increasing the permitted mileage by 50% only results in an increase of less than 5%?

No, not stuck - we drove down for holiday in Puglia in July (as our flights were cancelled), then I flew back to the UK leaving my wife here with the car. I then flew back down two weeks ago for a further holiday (we had to use 50% by September and I had 32 days to use this year). I'm flying back to London again at the end of the week, once again leaving my wife here with the car. So only if Italy gets added to the quarantine list this week will I have a problem.

My wife can work from wherever she likes, so she'll stay on and the car can be here for up to six months without issues (you get 90 days as standard without any need to notify the insurers, and I discovered by ringing up that a further 90 days was also allowed for free provided you notified the insurer of the relevant dates).

Obviously it's possible that if all hell breaks out Covid-wise, that my wife might get marooned here with the car but it's a risk she's prepared to take. Otherwise at some point I'll fly back down and we'll drive back together.

From the servicing/MoT records? My car was MoT'd in December just after the renewal date.



I wouldn't have bothered if the difference had been negligible, but in this instance it's going to be quite a lot over - we are just about to hit 8k for the year already, and the car is still 1k miles from home. I wouldn't want to find my insurance was invalidated in the event of needing to claim.