Insurance, ouch!

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
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Cornwall
Just about to buy my first car (at 31!). Only going to spend ~£1300, smallish engine (1.1 - 1.4). Went to thattenorontv.com for some quotes, and... whoa! I was sure I'd get insured for £300 or less... well you can double that for the smallest quote I got back.

Obviously I have no no-claims, although I've been driving various cars and vans at work for a year now.

I also thought it was odd that the difference between 3rd party + £500 excess and fully comp + £250 excess turned out to be about £20. Strange, strange prices.

So I'm thinking, there's no point in paying so much for insurance when the value of the car is that low. How do I get my insurance quotes down? £300 is about all I can afford to pay each year, and I would rather just keep on using public transport than line the insurance companies pockets, tbh.

Do I have any hope of getting a reasonable insurance price? No accidents, no convictions (other than crimes against fashion), no medical conditions.
 
Quite simply no. If your getting quotes of £600 even on basic cars for someone with 0 no claims thats pretty damn good in this day and age.

Generally it is now cheaper going for fully compy with a 250 / 350 voluntary than it is going for third party. About the only other think you can do is add a parent or partrner (ideally a female with lots of no claims) on as a second driver. I'm 23 with coming up to 3 years NCB and having my mum on as a second driver still saves me over £200 a year.

This might get you down to a £500 ish quote, but I highly doubt you will manage to get down to £300
 
Why have you only tried that one website?

Compare the market, confused, money supermarket etc

Then there are individual brokers such as Adrian Flux etc (I don't know many, as they haven't really worked out cheapest for me).

Also due to your age you do not need to constrict yourself to a 1.1 - 1.4. If anything, small cars with small engines work out more expensive on insurance as they are all driven by young drivers and are more prone to be involved in accidents. You have the liberty to stay away from these cars.

There are various little tips to push insurance quotes down. Google it. The biggest one for me was stating I parked my car on the street instead of on the drive / garage. Reduce my quote by £100. Putting myself as the registered owner reduced it a further £100. For annual mileage, the price increases once you go over 5k. So if you're not going to be doing more than 5k, don't put 7-8k just for the lols. Having said that, I wouldn't recommend lying and grossly underestimating either.

Oh and I almost forgot the biggest one. Adding my sister as named driver reduced my quote 1100 - yes, 1100! Then adding a further two named drivers reduced my quote by another couple of hundred.

(I'm 20, so my vast reductions by adding named drivers may not represent what someone older would get).

edit: Slightly misread your first post. I thought you were getting 1300 pound quotes. The quotes you're getting sound about right, I don't think you'll be seeing huge decreases.
 
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PraxxtorCruel said:
Sorry bud, but those days are gone. After all age is just a number oO
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I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but "it's just a number" is silly talk.

The older you get, the more you realise that inexperience amongst the young is a real and predictable indicator of their performance. We learn a lot through our mistakes, and young people naturally make a lot of mistakes as they gain experience.

So I can't see why you'd discount a persons age in determining risk, ever...
 
When I first got myself insured I got a Max Power magazine, there are loads of specialist companies that advertise in these type of mags due to their target audience and includes companies that specialise in new driver cover.

Give a few companies a call, tell them what others have quoted you and I'm sure you'll be able to save a fair few quid compared to quotes you already have. I had people calling me back offering me better prices and I saved a fair amount of money doing it that way.

Price comparison websites aren't actually that great in my experience, you have to shop around as much as possible and get on the phone. Good luck.
 
TS7 said:
Also due to your age you do not need to constrict yourself to a 1.1 - 1.4. If anything, small cars with small engines work out more expensive on insurance as they are all driven by young drivers and are more prone to be involved in accidents. You have the liberty to stay away from these cars.
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That's actually music to my ears :) A 1.6 or so would be a lot nicer to drive.

There are various little tips to push insurance quotes down. Google it. The biggest one for me was stating I parked my car on the street instead of on the drive / garage. Reduce my quote by £100. Putting myself as the registered owner reduced it a further £100. For annual mileage, the price increases once you go over 5k. So if you're not going to be doing more than 5k, don't put 7-8k just for the lols. Having said that, I wouldn't recommend lying and grossly underestimating either.
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Wait, parking on the street lowers your premium vs parking in drive/garage?

Oh and I almost forgot the biggest one. Adding my sister as named driver reduced my quote 1100 - yes, 1100! Then adding a further two named drivers reduced my quote by another couple of hundred.
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Hmm OK I'll add my sister, she's older than me been driving for 20 years or so and never had an accident.
 
FoxEye said:
I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but "it's just a number" is silly talk.

The older you get, the more you realise that inexperience amongst the young is a real and predictable indicator of their performance. We learn a lot through our mistakes, and young people naturally make a lot of mistakes as they gain experience.

So I can't see why you'd discount a persons age in determining risk, ever...
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From the sounds of it, although we don't have the whole story, your driving experience is limited. Age is a large factor in insurance, but so is driving experience. Having a £600 quote on your first car, with 0 Ncb is distinctly less than a 17 year old would pay.
 
FoxEye said:
Wait, parking on the street lowers your premium vs parking in drive/garage?
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Generally yeah, IIRC it's because something about people completely misjudging the width of their car and scrapping/hitting the garage.

Oh and my quote when I started driving was £1222, I'd have killed to get it down to £600 :p:D.
 
Then you might have to look at the fact that buying a car on your current budget is not a good plan.

Saving more, to enable you to pay the insurance, and giving you some money in the bank for those unexpected car bills would be a sensible choice IMO, but I don't know if you need a car, or if it's a "luxury" per se
 
ng93 said:
Generally yeah, IIRC it's because something about people completely misjudging the width of their car and scrapping/hitting the garage.

Oh and my quote when I started driving was £1222, I'd have killed to get it down to £600 :p:D.
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I read that on pistonheads, crazy. If you can't park in your own garage without damaging your car then you shouldn't have the privilege of owning said garage!
 
brightside_ said:
Then you might have to look at the fact that buying a car on your current budget is not a good plan.

Saving more, to enable you to pay the insurance, and giving you some money in the bank for those unexpected car bills would be a sensible choice IMO, but I don't know if you need a car, or if it's a "luxury" per se
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No I don't need one, but it does mean I'm limited to only going where public transport will take me. Can't exactly take a canoe on the bus either :p

A car is not essential as I live five minutes away from my place of work. It's not a question of saving more, I have enough to cover the car, insurance + bills for the next few years.

But I don't just hand over money without a fight :p
 
if i was trying to get something like that it would be 2.5k+ so you should be really happy with 600quid quotes and after all you have the same experience as a 17 year old that just passed has(if we take away the year driving cars at work)
 
grudas said:
after all you have the same experience as a 17 year old that just passed has(if we take away the year driving cars at work)
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In that year I've driven Partner & Bipper vans, and various Peugot cars (206s, 307s, etc), racking up 100s possibly 1000s of miles of motoring.

And it's taught me a lot about driving, obviously not everything, but a lot. Fair enough you guys have more experience than me, but I don't like being put in the same bucket as the yoofs :p Hah.
 
To be fair, you arent. The yoofs would be getting quotes of more like £1000-1500 on basic cars :P That's why you are getting people telling you £600 is good! I've been driving for 5 years with only 1 fault claim and 0 points and I'm still going to be looking at about £800 with 3 years NCB come my renewal.
 
FoxEye said:
In that year I've driven Partner & Bipper vans, and various Peugot cars (206s, 307s, etc), racking up 100s possibly 1000s of miles of motoring.

And it's taught me a lot about driving, obviously not everything, but a lot. Fair enough you guys have more experience than me, but I don't like being put in the same bucket as the yoofs :p Hah.
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I was getting quotes of £2000+ as cheapest when i was 17, even now at 22 with nearly 5 years driving experience i doubt i would get near £600. Though living in NI doesnt help
 
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