My car insurance is due for renewal the end of next month. Unsurprisingly, the figure was substantially more than what I pay now so I went to cancel. When I did, they tried tempting me back with an offer of a discount on my renewal ... had it been the same price I was paying I may have agreed to avoid the faff. Turns out no matter how many times I agree no discount is applied (or its so low I can't see the difference.) Now I've cancelled it, I feel a bit peeved they waited until I tried to cancel to even offer a better price... Its this usual practice? I've never seen it before.
Every year on every vehicle since jesus was a boy. It dosen't help that insurance has gone through the roof over the last 12 months
Interesting, I pretty much change insurer year on year. But it's always been a flat renewal price with no wiggle room.
It goes up on every renewal. I use comparison website and buy from new insurer every year (sometimes goes back to old insurer if it comes up cheapest, but always use this method). I cancel every year without hearing what they offer. As the Meerkat says, simples.
I usually do this, I don't have the patience or energy to play the game but I do fill in the feedback emails they send and say loyalty means nothing to them so they can GF
Mines gone up just over £1,000. But, one car written off due to flood damage and one minor accident skidding into a low fence on some black ice. Driving like a learner again ‘coz I need me some no years claims.
Half the time, they just ramp up the price and count on customer apathy. No such thing as loyalty to long standing customers, which is why I switch every year. Heh, as I was typing that, I got as far as "ramp up the..." And the next word my phone suggested was buggeration.
Weirdly, for the first time ever since I started driving in the 90s, my current insurer's renewal quote beat everything price comparison sites could muster.
Ours last year was quoted around £100 more for the renewal. The same provider on a comparison site was offering around £150 less than the previous year, not the cheapest on there by about another £100. They didn't want to match their own quote when we phoned to cancel, only what they had offered in the renewal. Whole lot is some form of dodgy maths. See what they say next month when we are up for renewal again.
That's what I'm thinking, Its like they don't realise how easy it is to switch. In honesty, if it was £30-£40 I might be lazy enough to just pay it. But £150 more annually its just stupid. Especially now I'm going from paying monthly to a lump sum.
So... It's a freakin' nightmare right now for car insurance pricing. One of the things that kicked off/accelerated the increase in pricing was when GIPP came into effect in Jan last year; insurance companies are no longer allowed to "price walk" existing customers and both new and existing customers have to be given the same pricing offers. As a result we're seeing fewer "introductory discounts" to entice new customers. Also around this time inflation was really starting to bite, meaning that the cost of labour, parts, materials, etc, in repairing vehicles is increasing, insurers are paying out more, and of course it's always the consumer who ultimately pays the price. Pricing is basically pretty awful right now. Premiums have increased 58% in the last year, and 19% in the last three months. So... General advice is always the same as it has been: shop around on price comparison sites (or even with insurers directly) at renewal and make sure you're not over-paying for the same cover. Some extra points I'd add though: Don't repeatedly run quotes over and over again where you're changing your details each time - excess level, occupation, annual mileage, etc - as that can be seen to be fraudulent behaviour: rate-raiding, ghost broking, or simply misrepresenting your details to get more favourable pricing. In response to this, insurers may jack up prices to deter you or simply refuse to quote. Enter your details as correctly and as accurately as you can the first time. Some insurers will track you across multiple price comparison sites and will simply re-cycle the same quote each time (PS: They don't do this with cookies, that's a total myth. FFS, you're giving them your name, address, car registration, and often your driving license number!! They don't need some kind of nefarious cookie collusion with price comparison sites to figure out who you damn well are!!) Optimal time to get a quote is 3 weeks out from your renewal date - generally it gets more and more expensive after that point Don't listen to people/articles telling you the "best" or "cheapest" occupations to select. Trying to guess how car insurers price this is like trying to guess how Google's ranking algorithms work - i.e. basically impossible - and anyone claiming to have a "definitive" answer is just plain wrong. Price comparison websites do not modify the quotes received by insurers and they do not charge commission on the premiums. They charge a flat fee for each sale, so there is no financial incentive for PCWs to misrepresent either the details you have provided or the quote returned by an insurer. No cookies or other tracking information is used in pricing (although it'll almost certainly be used in marketing unless you block or opt-out!) Disclaimer: I work for a price comparison website (in case it wasn't obvious ), but my views are my own and based on publicly-available information. Any inference you draw regarding my actual employer based on links I may or may not have provided are pure speculation on your part
Hum..... certainly doesn't feel like this when they jack up the price until people call up to cancel. Is there anywhere to report this "please don't leave, here's a discount while you are on the phone" practice? With so many people having multiple cars in a household. It would be good for price comparison sites to start offering multi-car insurance comparisons. Hint hint
Trust me, all the PCWs have been trying to get traction on something like this In the meantime however, Admiral’s dedicated multi-car product is usually rated quite well and can be very competitive. Again: views are my own based on publicly available information, do not claim to represent or speak for CurrentEmployer, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, etc.
Right, more ideas Would be ideal if I just enter 2/more car details, drivers and then comparison sites spit out the best solution. Chop, chop It would work even if it work out an estimated multi-car discount based on their advertised discount. Because one of my car is quite expensive to insure, any discount on its premium brings it down a lot. You have no idea how many multicar insurers I tried. Sites like LV and elephant have the worst quote webpages. All a waste of time and ended up buying individually. Even when shopping to buy individually, would still be good if comparison site tell me when insurer offer multi-car/policy discount. I was with Admiral, but they refused to give quote on 21st day when I was doing renewal, it arrived 19th day when I had already purchased elsewhere. Admiral quotes were slightly more expensive than buying individually this year. Might be able to wriggle it down on the phone, but they didn't want my business with their wait-for-renewal-quote system.
Just adding to this, all insurers report Combined Operating Ratio (COR) in their financial results, which on a very basic level is a measure of premium income vs expenditure. A COR of 100% means that for every £1 brought in on premiums, £1 is paid out in claims and other associated costs. A COR running below 100% is running a profit, above at a loss. Despite premiums increasing drastically, early predictions have the industry currently running at an average loss (106%). Then catastrophic events like nationwide floods, and the Luton Airport Car Park fire will drive up claim costs, and subsequently premiums even higher. Royal & Sun Alliance simply upped and left the personal motor market earlier this year, after hitting 120% the previous quarter. Insurer's want to be profitable, but also want to provide competitive prices and value for money. If they don't provide the latter customers go elsewhere, and no premiums coming in because they're not competitive on pricing means future claim costs won't be covered. Running at a 6% loss in the short term is better than bringing in nothing, but not sustainable. (Solvency II regs mean insurers have to keep pots of capital available to cover estimated claim costs, so customers won't suddenly be faced with bankrupt insurers if they do need to claim). They can't be competitive for everyone though, and each insurer has a target market, which does get adjusted and can differ across multiple products with the same insurer. Which is another reason it's important to shop around, and why as Byron says, there's no point trying to work out the "best" or "cheapest" occupations etc, as they're different everywhere, even across multiple products from the same insurer, dependent on the target market. Doesn't make the increases any less painful.
This. It is genuinely an extremely challenging market right now and it really isn’t greed that’s driving the prices up. The big players are always going to be able to weather the storm better than others, but in the past I’d have counted Royal & Sun Alliance as one of those “big players”. We’re seeing a big increase in newer and more flexible policies as a result. Temporary insurance, for example, or telematics/“black box” products. In fact younger drivers are almost being priced out of the “traditional” insurance market altogether and often have little choice but to take a telematics policy. My motorbike insurance is up at the end of November (too early to be running quotes yet), and I’m honestly dreading the prices I’m going to see. The last couple of years we’ve been able to pay the other half’s car insurance annually, but we had to switch to monthly when her renewal came through because of the price increases. In her case no one could beat her Axa renewal quote, and I have a feeling I’m going to see the same thing when my Bennetts renewal comes through. (Honestly in my case I’m just glad to see reasonable bike insurance premiums again after years of paying £70-£100 a month with a £600-£800 excess. Some scumfuck little twats tried to nick my brand new bike about 6 years ago, and it ended up being an insurance write-off. In exchange for the privilege of these scummy little tosspots dumping the bike they’d just ruined on my drive, I had the pleasure of being £2500-£3000 out of pocket and about 5 years of paying extremely high insurance premiums. No sympathy for lowlife shitbag motorbike thieves at all.)
Whelp, it's that time of the year when I have to pay the fleecing barstewards. £121.72 more than last year. It is a new car (used to have a crusty old Volvo V50), but it's a nice little V40 D3, so not exactly some 5 million HP boy racer mobile. Shopped around, but my auto renewal is the best deal by about £30. Even tried twiddling with options (yes I do lock it in the garage every night, don't drive during peak times and only do 5,000 miles tops a year ) but it made next to no difference. I still don't know why insurance companies need to know about driving convictions* five bloody years in the past, when it's removed from your licence after 3 years. When I establish my Reich, this will be one of the first things I change, as well as establishing mandatory daily beatings for the people who decided that customer loyalty means nothing for insurance (although in this case I appear to "come out on top"). *52 in a 40 back in 2019 when the speed limit suddenly changed from 50 to 40 - yes, really, even though they so they say they give a grace period to slow down.
Not helped by me making our last car much shorter at the front, a year ago, our insurance renewal was almost doubled, even with protected NCD. A visit to Uswitch put that right, by almost halving it again, from £780 down to £417.
