Car insurance

[watervole]

 When I got my car insurance renewal from ASDA, it was £1869 (and they could no longer include breakdown cover in that as the car was getting older).

Thank goodness I shopped around.  My new premium is under £800 and includes RAC Roadside.  And my new insurer has a telephone number.  ASDA used to stress me out terribly as you could only communicate by email - and they didn't always reply even then.  Most things had to be done by logging onto the policy and manually editing it to change anything (like a new driver) and I just hated it.

I'm now with IGO4, via Moneysupermarket.com

If that sounds like a bit of an advert, I guess it is.  Saving £1000 means a lot to us at the moment.  And having an insurer where I can also speak to a human being (I phoned up to ask a question about one part of the policy and had an instant helpful answer) is important to me.

Comments

[crazyscot]

800 quid?! My last renewal before leaving for NZ was more like 300, and that was with a moderately shiny car (MX5). OK, Cambridge wasn't exactly a hotbed of joyriding, but - boggle?

[watervole]

There's a learner driver on the policy.

[crazyscot]

Egads! Hadn't realised that insurance for the young was really quite such a premium loading :(

[matgb]

Yup. It's got to the stage where it's cheaper for a young male to get caught driving with no insurance several times a year and paying the fine than it is for them to go legit. Of coruse, that messes up their insurance costs in the future, but young males not always into planning.

Utterly ridiculous setup now, insurance is a horrible thing. Very glad I gave up owning a car.

[kerravonsen]

Cheaper, more cover, and better customer service - sounds like a win to me!

[coth.livejournal.com]

Shop around for your household policies too, when they come up for renewal. Do try RIAS - they specialise in over-50s and their cover was very reasonable. I dealt with them for my parents, always entirely to my satisfaction.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a PSA to me. A thousand?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

PSA?

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Sorry...a public service announcement.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

I've let the AA get my insurence for me from the start of my motoering life,2006, but I always cross check both Money Supermarket and Go compare before phoneing to accept the offer. So far there has not been more than a £5 pound difference between what the AA offers and the AA is usually cheaper, I'm paying about £780 this year. That does not inclde breakdown assistance though, I pay the AA £36 pounds a year for that.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

How much! £800 sounds an awful lot for a mature lady driver in a rural area. Mine was £260 for a man in outer London, fully protected ncd. I know its an old banger, but I didn't think you had anything fancy or had a bad record.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

That's for three drivers including my son who is still on a provisional licence. One firm wouldn't take a provisional licence at all on our particular car.

Plus Richard has a speeding offence in the last five years and a minor accident.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

No wonder its expensive with a new driver. Hope he passes soon!

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Just as a heads up for future reference, Mr EA shops around a lot & recommends Academy Insurance Services (0800 0839 885) & Call Connection (0800 561 1762) for cheapness & good service. We pay £330 per car, which includes Mr EA doing a lot of business miles.

[rockwell-666.livejournal.com]

*Never* let *any* insurance renewal quote go through "on the nod", they'll always try to gouge you for more money.

On my last insurance renewal for the bike (without asking me) they upgraded my RAC cover from UK to Europe wide and added a £50 "voluntary" excess (I didn't volunteer for it!)

One phone call later and I got a reduction on last year's premium :-)

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I always check around. I was just surprised at how much I managed to save because ASDA were last year's best buy. However, adding Henry early in the year added nearly £1000 to what I had been paying them, and other insurers don't seem to have stung me for so much on that front, perhaps because he's ready to take his test now.

I don't really know why the difference is so great though.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I remember that, when my mother was insuring her car for me to drive, we had to be very careful about my job description. "Journalist" evidently signalled "dangerous drink driver" and attracted a very high premium. When I worked on Computer Weekly, my colleagues found out that "technical writer" was the safest gambit, but that didn't quite apply to me. I think we discovered that "editor" was somehow more respectable than "journalist" (rather than indicating someone at the top of the drink chain).

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Heh, I got stung by the Indian High Commission insisting I paid for a work visa rather than a tourist one, after I put my job down as "Editor". Although I pointed out I was an editor of economic textbooks rather than the Daily Telegraph, they insisted that I might be going to Commit Journalism while out there on holiday.

[auntygillian.livejournal.com]

That confirms a similar experience I had: I usually describe myself as a publishing consultant or commissioning editor, and there's always a long pause while they search through the tick lists trying to find something to match. I was once refused insurance after that question/answer - no explanation - and on another occasion they did ask 'is that for newspapers?' so I did twig that journalism was bad. I too now say 'Editor'.

[sugoll.livejournal.com]

My theory is that the biggest bump on your annual car insurance is "how gullible were you last year?"