Insurance Con

[bodger]

My insurance was coming for renewal for my XJ Yam and I received the renewal quote which was for £116 (50% up on last year)
When they rang me to follow this up I told them I would not renew it with them and I would look around for a cheaper quote.
I found a quote on the internet for £68, for the same cover and excess .
Surprise surprise its my current insurer!
So I reinsured it on the internet for the same premium as last year.
This seems to happen every year for the bike and the car no matter who I am insured with.

[dannymassive]

This happens to me every year, on my car as well. I think they rely on people not bothering to shop around for the ease of the "automatic policy renewal" that most insurers have in place, which you have to phone them up to cancel. Most annoying!
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Previous Ride's - '01 Aprilia SR125 (Sold) '08 HONDA CBF600n (Sold) '96 CB500 (Sold) '01 FZS 1000 (Sold) '06 CB1300SA (Sold) '07 CB600F Hornet (Sold) - '93 Suzuki Savage LS400 (Sold) '98 Honda VTR1000 Firestorm (Sold) '05 CB600F Hornet (Sold) '01 FZS1000 Fazer (Sold) 2016 Harley Davidson Street Bob SE (Sold) '02 Kawasaki ZX9R (Sold) '98 CB600F Hornet (Sold) '04 Suzuki Bandit 1200s (Sold) '13 Yamaha FZ1-N

[pinkyfloyd]

Agreed with above. I got a lovely letter from mine saying I need to renew and, and I quote. "The best price from our extensive panel of the UK's top insurers is with your existing insurer." (Dial Direct)

Oh I thought. I then looked at the price they quoted me. £196.67. Not up 50% like the above but up 100%. Last years price was 96 quid.

Funnily enough I had done comparisons the day before as I know my insurance is due at the end of June so I always like to hunt around a month before so I can call my current and cancel if need be at the end of the year. (Some places auto renew unless you cancel).

Best quote I got was with Swinton and was £93. Needless to say I called Dial Defunct and made sure they would cancel my policy and went elsewhere.
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illuminateTHEmind wrote: I am just more evolved than most of you guys... this allows me to pick of things quickly which would have normally taken the common man years to master
Hockeystorm65:.well there are childish arguments...there are very childish arguments.....there are really stupid childish arguments and now there are......Pinkfloyd arguments!
Teflon-Mike:I think I agree with just about all Pinky has said.

[arry]

Unfortunately, it's not just as simple as 'same insurer, same price'. The broker that's handling your policy will have different admin and policy fees to the next, and commission levels will vary across brokers too - ie one may be earning 10%, another 20.

Also confusing is that just because it's the same insurer, doesn't mean the cover will be the same, nor does it mean things like excess will remain at the same level. Whilst the insurer will have a 'standard' market wording, some brokers will push the insurer to write a number of extensions or plug apparent 'gaps' in the wording which will make that wording bespoke to that particular broker.

Even more frustrating is that one insurer's rates are not the insurer's rates full stop. If an insurer provides capacity to a scheme intermediary then the rating models within that will be, say, May 2012. If it then goes on to update its rating model in June, it may not have a chance to update the rates on the May scheme until December 12, under the terms of the contract. This means that effectively you're still selling on the old price rather than the new.

And just to top it all off, if it is a scheme insurer / capacity arrangement, generally speaking if the scheme is running ok you don't take anything other than 'base' action, which is to say covering general inflation (staff handling costs) and claims inflation (the cost of everything bike related going up, personal injury claims becoming more frequent, yadayada), so you get a nominal increase of say 6-7% and that's that. When the scheme runs bad, however, then the insurer will look to fix that by one of 3 levers - 1) rating action, ie carrying rate across the whole book, 2) mix improvement - looking at sectors of risk that are costing money within the book and specifically targetting them to improve rating strength, or just lapse it out of the book entirely, and 3) dropping the broker's commission rate, which sounds great until, of course, the broker doesn't want to lose out, so will up policy admin fees to cater for it.


Minefield, eh?

[Polarbear]

arry, I'm sure you are right although most of what you wrote there imeans less to me than a document in Swahili.

However when you get a quote that is way higher than what you can get doing the comparison websites, from the SAME insurer (a la bodger) isn't that just a straight rip off?

When I had my 4x4 with sureterm direct, the first year was a good quote, the second year had a renewal fee of around £100. I phone them up and cancelled my policy. I then took a new one out with them, £100 quid cheaper, no renewal fee. In any other buisness it would be fraud.
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Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[arry]

[N cee thirty]

my renewal came back as the cheapest around and about £100 cheaper than the previous year...
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'00 Aprilia RS50 > '92 Honda CG > '99 Yamaha Fazer > '91 Yamaha RXS > '79 Suzuki X5 > 01' Honda Cg > 07' Honda Cg > 82' Kawasaki Z200 > suzuki gsxr 400 gk73a > honda vfr 400 NC30 Mod 2 Passed 09/06/2011

Jewlio Iglesias wrote: I actually did vote BNP once

[Rogerborg]

arry, arry, you forgot to mention the hidden "introductory discount", which I believe is pronounced "loyalty punishment".
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Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike

[arry]