bloody insurance

[Jim Stewart ...]

anybody noticed recently that car, caravan and house insrers are now all emailing you saying your renewal pack will shortly be arriving in the post then they renew without sending you one?....

[R D S]

Reading that it occurs to me that my car insurance renewed some time ago and I don't even know how much the renewal was!

I don't even know who our house is insured with!

[alan_m]

They cannot automatically renew your insurance unless you have previously given them permission.

[Tim Lamb]

Huh! I have had unsolicited offers. Presumably based on the last time I made enquiries.

A downside of *low cost* insurance is they save costs by expecting you to download and print off their terms and conditions.

I can say the recent govt. interference in insurance quotes has had no beneficial impact on renewal uplifts!

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

Tim Lamb wrote on 18/03/2022 :

I have just received an email from a company called Europages, claiming to link small businesses something to do with a past purchase. I cannot think of any business to business purchase I might have recently made, that might of triggered their emailing rubbish to me.

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

alan_m expressed precisely :

It is often a box you have to untick, so the default was to renew. They claim to be doing you a favour, in preventing your cover from expiring. Before the ticky box, I would email them and tell them if they attempted to auto renew, then I would block the transaction at the bank.

[Colin Bignell]

No, but then I have always insured through an agent, who is very good at keeping me informed.

[Another Dave]

I've noticed that, if you don't use use Firefox, Chrome or other major browser, the box doesn't appear. I never use my favoured browser (Vivaldi) when renewing insurance because the box doesn't show.

Another Dave

[alan_m]

They also make it difficult on-line to find where to cancel the auto-renew.

The last time I found that you had to select "renew insurance" button before given the options to i) change details ii) pay in one amount iii) pay by instalments iv) cancel auto-renew - but this was found by having to scroll down to the bottom of a long web page.

[Peter Johnson]

No, but when I changed my car on Wednesday I added it to the policy online. If I'd done it by phone I could have been charged a £25 admin fee.

[Steve Walker]

No, but they are wasting money, which puts premiums up.

My wife's car was "hit" almost a fortnight ago. It is a 2005 Matiz, that has only done 40,000 miles. They have now written it off for £1580 and we have asked can we have it back, expecting them to retain some of that money, but no, they will give it us back and deliver it for free, with no reduction in what we will receive.

The only damage was to the plastic bumper and possibly the fog light housing. A brand new bumper, already painted, is £276, fog light housing £15, fitting is just clips and screws.

How can they justify writing of a vehicle for a quick and easy repair, that would leave it better than before it was damaged, and cost a third of what they will pay out for writing it off?

[Colin Bignell]

Probably nearer half, if done by professional repairers, as that is about the point at which insurers will write a vehicle off. It is also important to know the category of write off.

Category N is non-structural damage that would be uneconomic to repair, which sounds like your case. You can do repairs to that yourself, but the insurance premiums might be a bit higher.

Category S is repairable structural damage. Category S write-offs are considered unsafe, and thus uninsurable, unless professionally repaired.

A category B write off is damaged beyond repair. Those have to go through an approved scrapping procedure, so you wouldn't get one of those back.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Very simply. As insurers they have to take a risk if they get it repaired so the work would need to be undertaken by approved garages etc and might mysteriously require far more work.

You now have shouldered the entire responsibility, They are happy.

[Steve Walker]

Half would mean £500 labour - to unscrew the old bumper and screw the new one on!!!!

Yes, N. The existing company confirm no increase with them.

[Animal]

insurance jobs are typically inflated, added to and inflated again

IMLE insurance co settlements defy any attempt at sane explanation

[Colin Bignell]

Which they can only do after carrying out a thorough inspection, to ensure that is the only damage. Failure to find every bit of damage can result in the repairer having to foot the bill for anything they missed. I found that out when my car was in a minor shunt and the authorised repairer failed to notice that two of the radar modules (£750 each parts only) had cracked cases and would fail when they later got wet.

[charles]

Rg compmay which I insure with appears to own a body works.,

[Steve Walker]

It has already been inspected.

The damage is purely to the plastic bumper, its clips and the bulb-holder locating lugs in the spotlight housing. There are no reversing sensors or anything like that.

A builder, working at a neighbour's, parked a van too close and a passing wagon, while squeezing through, hooked one of his side-marker lights against the front edge of our rear bumper, simply peeling it away, snapping the plastic clips, pulling the bumper far enough that the wire popped the bulb-holder out of the fog lamp and folding the plastic bumper back on itself, damaging the plastic and its paint. Nothing else was touched.

The fog and reversing lights are held in the bumper by a couple of screws each and the plastic bumper is held to the car by screws and plastic clips ... it is cosmetic only.

[Colin Bignell]

It is to stop people making ringers by, for example, welding a good front and a good rear together. Parts can be removed, but the body has to be crushed.

[Jacob Jones]

But that is an unusual situation where the insurance company would realise is very uncommon.