Car insurance - Main driver questions

matt_fsr

matt_fsr

matt_fsr

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I'm not after an absolute yes/no answer on this, more just opinions and experiences.

My g/f knows 2 colleagues that have their car insurance setup for the cheapest driver listed as the 'main driver' even though this isnt the case. I suspect that in the event of a small claim, this wouldnt matter much...

but if a large incident, say a multi-car pileup occurred, would an accident investigator dig into who is the actual main driver and declare the insurance void as the policy wasnt accurate? Or dont they really investigate this?

Just curious really. (And no, its not a smokescreen for "I'm being a bad boy" as our cars are insured for 5k and 25k miles so it wouldnt matter anything to us if we did this)
 
most insurance companies will throw out even small claims if the details dont add up, 60 year old driver on a modified saxo and the son pays for the policy etc.

they would look t who was driving the car at the time of the incident, who rings up and deals with the policy, how the person who deals with the policy speaks on the phone - if son rings up and refers to the car as his and his insurance etc


loads of people give false information to insurance companies but they quick enough to complain when they dont get paid out when they crash
 
Indeed investigations do take place.
Insurance fronting is a bit of a problem.
It's usually the case where 17 year olds get their parents to insure a vehicle and they are added as a "named driver".
Even though they will be driving the car 99% of the time.

Insurance company's do not want to pay if they don't have to.
And if a couple of days investigation means they don't have to pay out some of the claim (they always have to pay out for damages to the 3rd party) then they will go for it.

You wouldn't lie on house or contents insurance for fear of not getting paid out and the same should really be with car insurance.
 
stoofa said:
Insurance company's do not want to pay if they don't have to.
Click to expand...

Pretty much sums it up! It's not quite the "17yr old borrowing daddys car" fronting scenario as far as I know, just that the female of a couple seems to be named as the main driver on the policies in both cases, even when the car is typically driven to work daily by the male partner.

I'd imagine a crash en route to place of work may well cause problems - As said, its not me doing this as I think its pointless. Why save 10% of your policy cost but end up pretty much uninsured? Seems mad to me. Will try to make the point a little more forcefully if I can. Ta.
 
When I tried to be legal with Directline they called me a liar, well, not directly, just refused to insure me....

Went to elephant and got a quote for half the price of Directfail, then complained to them, had an investigation, got paid £50 for messing me around :D
 
directline messed me around

Long story short, I wanted to bring my car down to Uni with me, and with 2 weeks iirc left on the current policy (with me as a named driver) I started shopping around. Found a few quotes but were 600 quid cheaper than directline, the company I had 2 years named driver discount with.

Upon asking if they can beat the quote because I have one cheaper from someone else, they immeaditely contacted the under writers who determined I was a dishonest piece of filth because I got a quote from another company (not joking) and that the current policy would be terminated straight away....

Queue me wondering what the hell was going on, mam (policy holder) phoned up, they said we had said different things on the phone (we hadn't, they checked later) but would not terminate straight away.

They lost my business and won't be getting it back.

Can't fault Elephant though, cracking quote for me (well considering im a young driver driving a saxo 1.1 :P )
 
When I was 17 a number of firms told me over the phone to do this by making my mother the main driver, various people told me I was told I was law breaking filth because of it and my insurance was invalid, and I expect some people on here would claim so as well.

I phoned back to confirm, they said it was fine and most young people do it. Take from that what you will.
 
hurfdurf said:
Take from that what you will.
Click to expand...

Probably that come claim time, they'd have denied all knowledge, conveniently not have any records of your particular calls and end up in court in a 'he said, she said' battle of word vs word and probably ended up with a huge amount of hassle :p
 
Direct line basically told me to front in my first year of driving :o. Although they did honour my named driver NCB with another company in the second year. :)
 
hurfdurf said:
When I was 17 a number of firms told me over the phone to do this by making my mother the main driver, various people told me I was told I was law breaking filth because of it and my insurance was invalid, and I expect some people on here would claim so as well.

I phoned back to confirm, they said it was fine and most young people do it. Take from that what you will.
Click to expand...

Chances are you were being told that by a commission based broker who cares only about selling the policy rather than what may or may not happen if you have an accident.
 
Ok, so here is something I've wondered. My parents own two cars, at the moment both drive both fairly equally but not long back my Mum was commuting using one car and my Dad rarely driving it. Now both are insured under my Dad, as they have always done this and as such has lots of no claims. Is this still fronting?
 
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