Car Insurance renewals

sony007

sony007

sony007

Associate
Joined
27 Feb 2007
Posts
80
I find myself driving less and less nowadays, mainly driving to do my shopping and sometimes visiting friends. I'd be very surprise if I do 500 miles per year but I tend to put 1000 miles when asked by insurers. I've got 14 years no claims. I know other factors also come into the cost like type of car, where it's parked and where you live also.

But seeing the premium going up each year when you've not made a claim is a ballache. I know you can phone them up and they'll reduce it a bit to try to keep you on board, but that reduction of say £20 from say £460pa to £440pa stills feels like it should be better. I don't want one of those telematic or whatever those boxes are in my car, but asides from calling your current insurer to bring the price down and using Go compare and Compare the market search engines, are there any other ideas to reduce the yearly cost the genuinely work?

Just out of interest, what is the cheapest comprehensive deal in recent years that you've heard or had?
 
Beyond a telematics box and pay-per-mile offering there isn't much more you can do other than comparison sites; play with your job title, adjust mileage up as well as down, park the car on the drive versus a garage etc.
 
sony007 said:
I find myself driving less and less nowadays, mainly driving to do my shopping and sometimes visiting friends. I'd be very surprise if I do 500 miles per year but I tend to put 1000 miles when asked by insurers. I've got 14 years no claims. I know other factors also come into the cost like type of car, where it's parked and where you live also.

But seeing the premium going up each year when you've not made a claim is a ballache. I know you can phone them up and they'll reduce it a bit to try to keep you on board, but that reduction of say £20 from say £460pa to £440pa stills feels like it should be better. I don't want one of those telematic or whatever those boxes are in my car, but asides from calling your current insurer to bring the price down and using Go compare and Compare the market search engines, are there any other ideas to reduce the yearly cost the genuinely work?

Just out of interest, what is the cheapest comprehensive deal in recent years that you've heard or had?
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Not really, you've pretty much covered the list.

Cost of insurance is also made up of your job role, your age, postcode, type of car.

You could look at buying a car that's cheaper to insure.

That low mileage is going to be pretty much irrelevant to them.

If you're anti-telematics policies, you could look at one of those pay-per-mile policies.
 
Just paid £230 with 20 years no claims and no points but one none fault accident and my wife as named driver. It's been around that for the last few years

That's on a 2015 Honda civic 1.8 petrol

In answer to your question and in my opinion, no not really not that I know of. You get your renewal and then you use comparison sites to beat it, my renewal was £100 more
 
sony007 said:
I tend to put 1000 miles when asked by insurers. I've got 14 years no claims.
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Having mileage "too low" potentially increases your risk factor as it could be deemed you don't drive that often, or aren't confident to be driving often. It may be worth increasing this to say 5000 to fall into a "more normal" risk bracket (and it's something that is unlikely to be ever checked).


sony007 said:
. I know you can phone them up and they'll reduce it a bit to try to keep you on board, but that reduction of say £20 from say £460pa to £440pa stills feels like it should be better.
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Whatever discount they offer over the phone is normally just a token gesture - better off just quoting on gocompare/compare the market and jump to a different insurer - there is no benefit for loyalty these days, and with policies easy to quote/amend online no benefit to "convenience" (Unless you have a particularly complicated claims history).


sony007 said:
Just out of interest, what is the cheapest comprehensive deal in recent years that you've heard or had?
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Pointless people posting their personal figures as it will depend on car/age/location/claims/occupation/mileage etc.
 
Armageus said:
Whatever discount they offer over the phone is normally just a token gesture - better off just quoting on gocompare/compare the market and jump to a different insurer - there is no benefit for loyalty these days, and with policies easy to quote/amend online no benefit to "convenience" (Unless you have a particularly complicated claims history).
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I'd typically agree but my experience with Admiral has been really good* the last few renewals. Significant discounts over the phone beating any comparison site quote.

*I wish they'd just quote the final price :rolleyes:
 
Why are you paying £460 pa? I've got a relatively new car, I'm 32, I've got 10 years no claims, and I'm insured for about 10,000 miles pa. My insurance is about £275 pa....I would have thought you could get a massively better price.

Armageus said:
Pointless people posting their personal figures as it will depend on car/age/location/claims/occupation/mileage etc.
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Valid point about too few miles, but I'm not sure posting your stuff is irrelevant. It gives the OP a little context to get him to shop around.
 
I'd agree with looking at adjusting the mileage - the extremes tend to make a big difference - around 5-20K miles or so seems to be best.

I'd also look at adding other people on if there is anyone you can - it can have somewhat unpredictable results including being cheaper than just yourself.

Like with dLockers I've had good results with Admiral personally - on my pickup the price has mostly stayed static within about 3% or something and the last renewal was actually £50 cheaper than the previous year premium.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
Why are you paying £460 pa? I've got a relatively new car, I'm 32, I've got 10 years no claims, and I'm insured for about 10,000 miles pa. My insurance is about £275 pa....I would have thought you could get a massively better price.



Valid point about too few miles, but I'm not sure posting your stuff is irrelevant. It gives the OP a little context to get him to shop around.
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Factors like postcode and vehicle will make a huge difference - and not always intuitively - I moved from a very good postcode for insurance purposes to one a band down but it is actually cheaper...
 
Rroff said:
Good thing it isn't say a Golf R or a Land Rover - around here they want like £2+K even if it basically sits in a locked garage all year :s
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Garaging typically increases the cost as well, as enough folk have nailed the walls of their house/caused structural issues.
 
1995 mk3 fiesta 1.6i 16v, insurance is £151 fully comp for me (age 41) 6000 miles on policy but do less than 1000 due to covid etc. road tax however is 280 :( you win some you loose some.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
1995 mk3 fiesta 1.6i 16v, insurance is £151 fully comp for me (age 41) 6000 miles on policy but do less than 1000 due to covid etc. road tax however is 280 :( you win some you loose some.
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Amazed that it makes sense to run a car that old. I always think this when i see very old cars still around. Surely you'd save money (and gain many years of advancement in cars) in not too much time by buying a much more modern and economical (but still old and cheap) tax free/nearly tax free little car?
 
Jez said:
Amazed that it makes sense to run a car that old. I always think this when i see very old cars still around. Surely you'd save money (and gain many years of advancement in cars) in not too much time by buying a much more modern and economical (but still old and cheap) tax/nearly tax free little car?
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Are you a PCP car salesmen? Because you sound like a PCP car salesman :o:D
 
dLockers said:
Are you a PCP car salesmen? Because you sound like a PCP car salesman :o:D
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Haha, about as far from it as possible, i would never finance a car, and truly will never understand ever doing so. But cars that old surely make no sense! I mean a cheap old car from the era where manufacturers of small cars got them to the point that they were hardly taxed at all and did 60mpg+, the small city diesel era :)
 
The cheapest car to run is the one you already have. You’d need a lot of fuel savings to make up the £3k you need to buy anything remotely worth buying.

Id also not want to be running an old city diesel. Injectors, DPFs, turbos, clutches, DMFs etc all can throw a near £1k bill and will all fail at some point, it’s just a matter of when.

At that end of the market you really want to stick to a simple NA petrol car to keep the bills low.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
The cheapest car to run is the one you already have. You’d need a lot of fuel savings to make up the £3k you need to buy anything remotely worth buying.
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Depends on the mileage covered i suppose. The maths is £~200-250/year in tax saving, and ~20mpg increase in efficiency. I dont buy that the newer car would be particularly expensive to maintain. There are petrol options too, i am being quite broad in the comment about the very old car.

If he hardly ever uses the car it would take ages to pay back i suppose. Don't forget though that you'd also be in a car which is say 15 newer (2010?) with everything which goes with that.
 
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