Car Insurance 2022-2023

Lounge
1

The old threads are locked, so here goes

Having been with Direct Line for many many years, I missed the fact that my insurance expired at 23.59 on 26th Dec when they had for as long as I can remember kept it in force until around midday on the date of renewal which is today the 27th.

I’d planned to phone them on Friday/Saturday to sort it out but got bogged down with various things and completely forgot. So of course due to Christmas and Boxing day there are no telephone staff now until later today.

No changes on my side but the premium has gone up around 25% to almost £500, so I wanted to talk to someone to see if they could ‘do anything’ to reduce it which they have done several times in recent years (I never used to ask and now wonder why).

I also noticed that the compulsory excess has been raised for claims on renewal.

The renewal letter seemed to include lots of information I’ve not seen or can’t recall seeing in recent years - one was an email address - I always tend to phone them to renew and the email address they have is ancient and defunct. So, typically I could not log in to renew before midnight - no idea of the password assuming I ever had one and of course a password reset via email link would not work.

Bizarrely I then noticed they had Mrs AC’s first name spelt incorrectly, something I find it hard to believe I’ve not spotted as it’s presumably been wrong for several years - can only assume that in skimming the policy details at renewal the brain saw what it thought was correct.

So, I’ll have to try to call them tomorrow at 9am to see if they can match or better the now lapsed renewal quote, but in desperation earlier and forgetting they can’t offer cheaper premiums to new customers I tried getting a new online quote using a different email address - typically that is probably well over £100 more expensive again.

I’m always reluctant to give out loads of personal info to price comparison sites, but if when I phone tomorrow the premium is unacceptably high I may need to look around.

What have your experiences been like this year?

Not sure if the underwriter or owner of Direct Line has changed but I did see an article saying their profits were better than expected but still significantly down on the previous year, so premiums would have to rise.

3

Many policies do in fact give you a continuity grace period outside of the policy.

I’d be tempted to shop around however because anecdotally at least insurance companies don’t give existing policy holders the best deal.

1 Like
4

I wouldn’t have any qualms about using a comparison site, however you may find some brokers can quote on line ?

This would give access to the Lloyds market, which no price comparison site can.

Hope you can sort it out.

Best wishes

Ian

2 Likes
5

They love people working at home.

1 Like
6

Direct Line have insured both of our cars for several years. My wife’s renewal was about 15% more last month but when I did some online comparisons it remained very competitive. The excess was unaltered. Looks like prices rising across the market?

Incidentally I achieved nothing by trying to haggle!

On my new car they were a good price and give full new replacement for total loss in the first 12 months, ie like GAP insurance. Not many appeared to offer that.

I have no desire to buy the very cheapest every year as I (perhaps mistakenly) assume that not all Policies are alike and a larger company is better. I have also had very prompt telephone service from DL as well as using them for a possible no-fault claim this year and finding their service and information faultless.

Bruce

1 Like
7

I insure with LV and have just renewed, the price went down about 10%, to approx £280 for fully comp protected for Audi A3 Black Edition, which was unexpected as I didn’t even speak to them. I do use comparison site, including Moneysupermarket.com, Comparethemarket.com, both sites lowest price was higher than my renewal quote from LV. Comparison sites are good for a check on your renewal quote but in my experience don’t always yield the best price. As others have suggested an independent insurance broker may give best result.

1 Like
8

Just had a renewal notice from Saga. Price increase of 33%.
Same car, but 1 year older and a lower replacement cost.
Everything else the same.
Went onto a few comparison websites and got 3 slightly different quotes from LV. Just a couple of £s difference between them. Some other “unknown” companies were cheaper.
All 3 LV quotes were about 10% cheaper than my original Saga quote. Plus the compulsory + voluntary excess was £50 less.
Still very much worth shopping around for insurance.

9

My recent renewal this year for the dog wagon’s insurance was about 7% up on the previous year. I went on to the meerkat site and managed to get a cheaper quote - saving enough to make switching worthwhile. The total, with all the trimmings, including breakdown cover, was under £200 fully comp; not bad for a wagon that will do 155mph.

3 Likes
10

Both my wife and I have found Tesco to be consistently a good price over the past several years. (However for no apparent reason they wrote to us a week or two ago saying that they’ve decided to withdraw offering insurance to our island location so we won’t be able to renew when due in about 6 weeks time - they have also, more annoyingly, withdrawn credit cards from here this year …yet they have a thriving store here!)

2 Likes
11

Now with one fewer customer? :thinking:

12

I always thought this was the case, even if only for 12 hours or so into the renewal date.

13

I’ve not used a broker for decades but that’s a good point.

1 Like
14

Tesco car insurance are very competitive and helpful.

I’ve been using Tesco for years. Had 5 cars insured with them at one point, 3 in the “high performance” bracket.

Current hatchback for transportation of the dog comes in at £165 per year. Likely age related :laughing:

1 Like
15

Is there any ‘grace period’?

There is no grace period when it comes to car insurance. Your policy will end at the time specified on the documents, and will not run for a single day beyond that. Therefore you must ensure that you have continuous cover at all times, such as when switching between one insurer and another.

This was my understanding I think the ‘rules’ changed about 5 years ago - it certainly did with horse insurance- but that’s another story

4 Likes
16

Funnily enough, when I switched from my Mini to my little Suzuki (one of my better choices) even though the Suzuki, had less performance , cheaper parts etc, the cost went up.

We’ll see wot happens in May

17

I’m possibly similar in the sense of ‘better the devil you know’ and we’ve used DL for many years and have found them generally to be excellent.

18

A friend uses LV and I was surprised at how much cheaper his insurance is than mine.

19

It seems many are now seeing price rises.

As my vehicle is ‘contract hire’ and not currently parked off-road I’ve just renewed with DL and despite it being a higher premium than I would like, I just didn’t want to risk it for more than a few hours. I guess there’s still the 14 day cooling off period, but I didn’t really want to spend a day off looking around for cheaper quotes.

Nov/Dec are utterly hectic each year for us as it is family wise. Bad planning perhaps but this is compounded by having 2 MOTs and insurance renewals each December which with all the other costs around this time we could well do without, something we must remember when we change vehicles next.

20

One of our current vehicle MOT was December when we purchased it.

Been pulling it back a month per year, it’s now August. You do end up paying for 11 month MOTs but December is a nightmare with garage closures.

1 Like
21

That sounds a pretty good deal.

I forgot to mention that in my case it’s the ‘trimmings’ that increasingly seem to add to the cost - ‘motoring legal cover’, ‘NCD protection’ and ‘enhanced guaranteed car hire’ are all individually not that much but add up. I think they are well worth having though.

We’re also reciprocally named as additional drivers on our individual policies - Mrs AC rarely drives my car but I drive hers very frequently. It would have been a bit cheaper to remove her from my policy this year, but I’ve left her on for added convenience if we needed it. Oddly last year it would have been more expensive for me as main driver alone, compared to having her as a named driver as well.

1 Like