OT Car insurance.

[harryagain]

Bit of paper/renewal document in the post to the effect that my car insurance had gone up by ?26. (Priviledge) Anyway it says in the Daily Mail (hence must be right) that car insurance is coming down due to legislation stopping the "whiplash" fraud.

Also they were going to just take money using CC number from last year.

So naturally ang them up & had a row & was fed a load of obvious bollix.

So went on the net, spent a half hour typing in all my details and what do you know, cheapest was Priveledge at exactly the same price as last year. Crooks or what? You'd think it would be cheaper to renew an existing customer. So rang them up, another row and they agreed to give me last year's price.

Told them to f*** off as well with "automatic renewal".

I thought they weren't allowed to store CC details on their computers anyway? Rang my bank about this, they were pretty evasive. So look out & read the fine print when you get your insurance renwal document.

I wonder if they'll try the same trick with the house renewal?

[bert]

In message , harryagain writes

Generally speaking insurance is coming down but maybe their actuaries are beginning to realise that electric cars can be much more expensive to repair.

[Jeff Layman]

The advantage of automatic renewal is that if you don't get your act together and check alternatives, or some crisis comes up and you forget to renew or are away from home when the insurance expires, you are still insured. That could work out considerably cheaper than saving a few quid with another insurer's premium.

[Nightjar]

On 13/01/2015 18:48, harryagain wrote: ...

Perfectly acceptable, provided that they meet the required security standards and they don't hold the information any longer than is necessary, which, in the case of an annual payment, will be at least a year.

[Michael Chare]

The story I saw was the premiums were going up because the cheaper petrol is leading to more vehicle usage.

[Michael Chare]

The problem I find occurs when the card has expired.

[PeterC]

Saga did, so I tried Age UK. Just had the 3rd. renewal through and, overall, it's gone up by a couple of quid (it went up a bit for the second year, then went down a bit, then up a bit and now up a bit more; "a bit" is ~£1 - £2).

[PeterC]

Age UK accepts DD with no extra charge - probably used to DODs forgetting to renew.

[Bob Henson]

It's not just car and house insurance, you'll find the same scam every year with AA and RAC renewals too. Yes, I know it's legal to charge whatever price they like, but it definitely shouldn't be legal to charge varying prices for exactly the same service just to see if they can get away with it. Each year my demand for RAC or AA services (I used to switch depending who was cheapest) is nearly double what I paid the previous year, and each year they used to cut it back down again after a heated phone call.

I don't discuss it now, I look up their current price for new customers on the web, check if the other organisation is a lot cheaper (they're usually the same), and then I just ring up and tell them what I'm going to pay. So far, they've accepted the fair price without question. They always try the repeating credit card thing too - I just flatly refuse to permit it, reminding them that their "calls are recorded for training purposes".

[Mark]

Don't you get masses of spam (from all 80 companies)?

[Tim Watts]

Not with comparethemarket - I've been using them for about 3 years for house and car insurance.

[Harry Bloomfield]

harryagain formulated the question :

Always best to warn them when you begin a policy, that you are denying them permission to auto renew and if that is not acceptable to them, you will go elsewhere. Warn them if they attempt to auto renew, you will consider it to be fraud and take the appropriate steps to deal with fraud.

Tell them you would welcome a competitive quote, when it is due for renewal.

Thats what I do and it works...

[Harry Bloomfield]

Bob Henson formulated the question :

A little story about insurance auto renewal...

SWMBO deals with the house insurance. Many years ago she was persuaded by her bank Barclays, that they were cheapest. For many years they just auto renewed, without complaint from her or her even looking into what it was costing, despite my repeatedly telling her to get some quotes.

This year, it developed into a row and I forced her hand to get some competitive quotes. The result was quotes of 1/5th to 1/4 of what Barclays were trying to charge us. The most expensive being those of

1/4 and for exactly the same cover.

Whilst the iron was still hot, I got her going on sorting out her numerous bank accounts, all earning no interest. She now earns 5% in one DD current account and 1.5% in another.

The insurance co's try it on, the banks try it on - they depend upon loyal customers not to shop around - always shop around.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If you want to stay with the same company, just phone them up and say you've had a better quote and would they like to give you their best price?

Works every time I've tried it.

[Tim+]

Where have you been?? New customers always get better deals than loyal customers these days.

Regarding automatic renewal, I've just found out that I've had two simultaneous policies on the same car with Direct line thanks to them automatically renewing after I had taken out a new policy with them (at nearly £200 cheaper). Possibly my fault but I've always asked them to NOT auto-renew but clearly I got caught out by not paying attention. Fortunately they've fully refunded the more expensive policy.

A tip for the future though, if you pay with American Express, they won't auto-renew.

Tim

[Mark]

I used a price comparison site once for car insurance. It didn't save me much and I did get some spam.

One thing to watch out for is that the policy I was sold had less cover than the 'standard' policy from the same insurer.

Since both I and my car are old[1] there little to save for me but YMMV, of course.

[1] I pay the "minimum" premium

[harryagain]

That's what I did and yes. Because it was an electric car, only nineteen companies quoted. But I had instant emails from the top seven or eight.

[Mark]

I wouldn't describe a instant response to a quote request as spam. I was referring to getting emails trying to sell other types of insurance or further emails a year later.

[harryagain]

It didn't with this shower. They came up with all sorts of fantastic reasons. It was then I looked on the internet and found a quote (From the same company) for exactly the same money as last year. Even then they cam up with yet more BS.

So they try to rip off existing customers.

[harryagain]

Well I'm glad something good came out of this post.