I Hate Car Insurance

[Philf1]

Moral of the story is always shop around and never ever auto renew.

[jeebowhite]

Couldnt agree more, I would have been bankrupt if I let it auto renew, thankfully I spend about a month in advance shopping around and waiting to snap the best deal, sadly though, when it comes to swapping motors mid policy, you can lose out on that available time and end up having to stick with what you have!

[ed12]

They also have you for policy adjustments. Usually an admin fee of £20-50! What are they doing? Hand delivering your request to head office for that? lol

[Philf1]

There all just thieving bar stewards!

[Kel-p]

Amazingly tesco have just quoted me £670 for my ecoboost mondeo. Everyone else wanted about £1400+ s'pose living in shottingham and being a bus driver doesn't help. *please don't stone the bus driver*

[Philf1]

Ahh but is it smart price? lol

[Nighthawk]

Isn't that Asda? It would be nice if they did the 10% cheaper guarantee on insurance. I guess every little helps though...

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[Kel-p]

Tesco Value insurance wasn't that much cheaper, about £20 I think. what made me laugh was the voluntary excess was set at £350 slid it down to £100 premium did not change. Couldn't buy it quick enough haha!

[Kel-p]

Like people say tho never auto renew, and always have a play about with excess and named drivers and all that jazz.

[jeebowhite]

I think blaming it on driving busses is a bit harsh lol

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[Kel-p]

Seriously we're classed as high risk. Mrs worked for Swinton and they wouldn't even touch me!

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[MiltyG565]

My uncle is a bus driver. Has been for many years, even in Belfast during the 70s and 80s. He often tells me of how back then, he could pick up a car and have it on the road with insurance for a couple hundred pound. Even today, he has a Mk3 Mondeo 2.0TDCI and a Mk1 Focus 1.8 Zetec on the road, and he's still just driving buses. Less now, in fact, because he's semi-retired.

So, I'd say it's more likely because you're a bus driver in a certain area, rather than a bus driver, or something like that. All the risk categories are cross-referenced, so being a 17 year old male student with a £200 car means you'll get ludicrous quotes. A 35 year old male student with a £200 car will get far better quotes, and not necessarily because of driving experience, because that seems to count for very little when it comes to insurance.

[Kel-p]

Postcode lottery fella.

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[MiltyG565]

Postcode lottery fella.

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Indeed! I had similar problems. Living in a rural area, there aren't many cars in the postcode, which I hear effects insurance prices, but also, there used to be a ton of crashes right outside our house - some fatal. There haven't been any serious incidents in a few years now (who would have thought that a flashing road sign would do the trick?), but I think that seriously screwed our insurance prices.

[GrumpyTrucker]

Insurance is, and always will be, a cash cow for someone until it's regulated somehow. I started driving in 1988, with a Vauxhall Chevette. At the time there this wonderful thing called Third Party Fire & Theft insurance that you'd take out for your first few years to build up an NCD. Simples. Dammit, that phrase is so ingrained these days. If memory serves it could be as little as a third of the Fully Comp quote or even less.

With the rise over the last decade or so of "No Win No Fee" and "Had an accident in the last 12 months? Then sue the blighters" claims companies - that the insurers never seem to fight - TPFT insurance is worthless, and often more expensive, since I reckon nearly all claims going through insurers these days are Third Party claims. Usually for whiplash, and usually for 16 passengers in a Mini Cooper.

If we had regulations that cameras had to be fitted front and rear, or at least that insurance companies had to make a reasonable effort to fight claims that are, on first glance, excessive or even fraudulent, maybe our premiums would come down. I've never been able to figure out how something that is mandated by government that we have to have under penalty of a criminal conviction, isn't regulated by that same government to ensure that it is operated in a fair and just manner with due diligence being carried out on claims.

[MiltyG565]

Insurance is, and always will be, a cash cow for someone until it's regulated somehow. I started driving in 1988, with a Vauxhall Chevette. At the time there this wonderful thing called Third Party Fire & Theft insurance that you'd take out for your first few years to build up an NCD. Simples. Dammit, that phrase is so ingrained these days. If memory serves it could be as little as a third of the Fully Comp quote or even less.

With the rise over the last decade or so of "No Win No Fee" and "Had an accident in the last 12 months? Then sue the blighters" claims companies - that the insurers never seem to fight - TPFT insurance is worthless, and often more expensive, since I reckon nearly all claims going through insurers these days are Third Party claims. Usually for whiplash, and usually for 16 passengers in a Mini Cooper.

If we had regulations that cameras had to be fitted front and rear, or at least that insurance companies had to make a reasonable effort to fight claims that are, on first glance, excessive or even fraudulent, maybe our premiums would come down. I've never been able to figure out how something that is mandated by government that we have to have under penalty of a criminal conviction, isn't regulated by that same government to ensure that it is operated in a fair and just manner with due diligence being carried out on claims.

It is regulated. The thing about the personal injury claims is that they can cost a lot more to fight than they would to just pay up, so a lot of the time, the insurance just pays up. You've got it exactly right, though. Fortunately, they are coming down on the personal injury cash-cow, and that's seeing our insurance prices drop - not by much, admittedly. 5 years ago, the car insurance industry lost millions because of those kinds of claims - "I drove over a pothole and broke my suspension... and I also have whiplash" - so they just jacked the prices up to try and make up the shortfall.

[GrumpyTrucker]

There's "regulation" and regulation. Off the top of my head I can't think of any other situation where we are required by law to have a commercial product, failure punishable by conviction, that is overseen by private companies whose only interest is profit. If we could opt out then fair enough, let them fleece people but we have no choice. We want a car we have to have insurance. The government should at least make more of an effort to ensure that the charges are 'reasonable', and not high to keep profits high when a bit of due diligence could reduce claims.

I'm not saying fight everything, but even the dumbest of the dumb can get a sense of when something doesn't smell right. Even if they just made the overtures of "nope, we're not paying, see you in court" it might put off a fair percentage of them. But they fell into a cycle of just paying out. It happened to my Mum - had a small front end prang with a lone male driver. Claim went in and suddenly there was a passenger also claiming whiplash. 2 whiplash claims, car repair, car hire and time off work claims later and the insurance company had forked out thousands. Damage to my Mum's car? About £150. The whole industry is rotten to the core.

But, as someone who can't seem to get cheap insurance due to a postcode lottery, even though not a single car has been vandalised / broken into or stolen in the area for years, I just give up if I'm honest.

[Nighthawk]

Do you not have a TV licence then? That's a criminal offence last I knew.

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[MiltyG565]

I'm not going to try and deny that car insurance is a rip off, but can you imagine how much it would cost if everyone didn't have it?

It's just about the height of capitalism in the UK - Make something a legal requirement, then let the market dictate the price.

Frankly, the government never will regulate the price of insurance, for a few good reasons, probably the best one being that it doesn't benefit them in any way to do it. Let's not forget that cars are a luxury item, and are expensive to run even if you take out the cost of insurance. The attitude of the government will be "If you can't afford it, tough".

Mine is up for renewal in September, and I'm hoping I can save £30-£40 a month to make it around £50 a month.

[BeccaaCat]

America don't have insurance as a legal requirement and I swear it's cheaper out there or am I completely off the mark?

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[Nighthawk]

I believe only a few states don't require some sort of liability insurance and then its quite expensive.

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[MiltyG565]

America don't have insurance as a legal requirement and I swear it's cheaper out there or am I completely off the mark?

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Lots of things in the USA are cheaper than here. Lots of things in the USA are also more expensive than here. The comparison isn't good enough to say that because it's not a legal requirement for them, it is cheaper. There are a lot more factors at play than just the law.

[GrumpyTrucker]

Do you not have a TV licence then? That's a criminal offence last I knew.

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1) I said "a commercial product". Not sure the TV licence counts as that's really more a tax. But that's probably just semantics

2) I still tend not to think of the BBC as a private company. Although, I can't shake the feeling that the collection and administration of the TV licence is by a government funded body, not a private company. Happy to be corrected there. My error admittedly, but at least the TV licence doesn't vary by postcode or whether it's your first TV or not.

3) I'm sure I heard somewhere that changes are on the way to make not having a TV Licence a civil offence not a criminal one. Ah, found it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26727068

@Milty - Agreed, they won't do it, but that doesn't negate any moral argument that they should. Luxury item or not we are still told by Government that if we have a car on a public road it has to be insured. Failure to do so currently carries a criminal conviction. Something that carries those sorts of penalties should not be solely at the whim of private, profit oriented companies to set pricing. All I'm saying is that there should be some regulation to ensure insurance companies make every reasonable effort to discourage fraudulent claims rather than just paying out, and that pricing is 'reasonable'. Although, now I've written that I can't help thinking "justifiable" would be a better term.

Insurance is supposed to be an assessment and balancing of risk. Where is the risk if, on the occasions the insurance companies lose out, they just hike prices to keep profit margins?

Anyway rant over. I get into all sorts of trouble on this topic.

[MiltyG565]

Morals don't come into it, buddy. Everyone has their own morals. What is "morally wrong" to somebody, might be just normal for somebody else - homosexuality being a pretty obvious example. In that respect, the government has no moral duty. They do have a civil duty, to do right by the residents of the country.

I agree, though. But it's not something the government could provide, so it pretty much has to be out-sourced to the private market.

Reasonable and justifiable are 2 pretty loose terms. Reasonable, again, is a subjective term. I paid £3 for butter earlier. Was that reasonable? I don't think so. Others might say that it is. You see what I mean.

Justifiable - Any insurer could pull up your file and say "These are Mr.Jone's details, and based on this, we've calculated that his risk category is XXX, which means we charge him £XXX". It would be pretty hard to call an insurance company on unjustified charges.

I agree with you, though - Insurance is expensive, painfully so, sometimes, but I just don't think what your saying would really work too well in practice. The 2 obvious solutions I could think of would be a "Government Standard" - Where the government publishes a list of prices based on different risk categories. The other would be for the government to set up a single organisation to sell car insurance (although don't hold your breath on this making insurance cheaper). But even at that, the government still has no incentive to do any of this. If people will pay for it (and people always will pay for it - It's an annoyingly ingrained part of our culture, now), the Gov won't do a thing about it. Also, option one that I listed above, if implemented, would doubtless only be a guideline, as, although we have socialism, we also have capitalism, so they don't like to stifle to market too much, so they'd let the businesses charge what they want, so long as it's not too wide of the mark.

Sorry buddy, but I don't think there's much way around it.

[BeccaaCat]

Sorry can you explain how homosexuality is a moral issue lol?

You can choose to rip people off, you can't choose to be !Removed! lol so that's not really a question of morals at all...

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