somewhat OT - car windscreens

I have had stone chips repairs FoC on the insurance in the past. They should not count those the same as a complete replacement and require you pay the excess. However your insurance may not be the same.

In article <sflglv$eft$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, TimW snipped-for-privacy@nothanks.com writes

Usually differentiate between replacing or repairing. £240 sounds steep for a repair. Some are free some charge about £70.

in some retail car parks, you sometimes see an autoglass or autowindscreen van and gazebo offering free window chip repairs. Might be worth a try?

I'm not sure what's in it for the business.... perhaps others can elucidate?

I think they just charge the repair it to your insurers, when I asked once my insurer wasn't included ...

Perhaps the issue is that the chips are of a size and/or location that mean they are outside the limits for repair.

Chris

There can be conditions on the windscreen cover, like using their authorised repairer. If their repairer can't get the windscreen for an old car, they may not pay for someone else to do it, or have a stonking excess. Normally there is a separate excess for windscreen cover, apart from the normal excess on the policy - £240 seems high to me.

Also, if you go to a price comparison site and ask for an insurance quote, and then ask for a quote again owning up to a recent claim for windscreen replacement, the quote can go up at some insurers. So while they may say it won't affect your NCB or whatever, it can affect your renewal quote if you habitually shop around.

Garages aren't skilled in doing windscreen repairs so they would be subcontracting the work to somebody else. When I bought a car with some windscreen chips I took it to this lot:

who filled them in for £60. You can still see them, but at least they haven't spread further.

(I asked Autoglass who came up with a ridiculous quote - they seem like the British Gas of windscreen replacement. Although they might be more competitive doing insurance jobs)

Theo

Some policies have a lower excess (like £15) for windscreens. Also you may be able to have the screen repaired if the chip isn't too bad and not where the wiper wipes.

It should be stated I the policy document. My current policy has an separate excess for windscreen damage - one small amount for chip damage and another higher figure for replacement windscreen/glass.

I've previously had policies with zero excess for glass damage/replacement BUT the renewal document took the windscreen excess to many £100s meaning that the insurance company wasn't taking any of the risk on glass. I always check renewal quotes for a change in policy like this which amounts to a hidden price increase (or more correctly a worse comprehensive coverage).

My policy states that they will only pay windscreen claims if you use their windscreen repairer partner, or seek prior approval.

Shopping around is unlikely increase your insurance quote!

What has always been the case is that if you make a claim your insurance premium is likely to rise, irrespective of insurer. You can protect your NCB with extra insurance but the protected NCB will be applied after the premium has been increased.

I've found at one time the additional premium for protecting a NCB was insignificant with respect to the overall policy cost but these days it is substantially more.

What has been reported is that trying to obtain multiple on-line quotes using different information each time can trigger a price increase if you don't clear cookies between attempts.

Windscreen cover quite probably only apply to sorting cracks [1] . A full replace job would probably come under repairs to the car so be charged as such rather than a repair to the windscreen.

What can happen is that the cracks are too big or in such a place that repair cannot be undertaken and replacement is required .

There are stone chips and stone chips though. Most of the ones I have had repaired were in the few mm size and without spreading starburst cracks having initiated.

ISTR you have to get it to the fairly soon after it happens or the cracks may spread too far for a good repair to be possible.

I can just spot one larger repair on my passenger side. The others are nearly invisible. Quite a trick for a clear plastic two part resin to so nearly match the refractive index of glass.

I'm sure that would not be legal, and he would have to lie to the insurers.

Well....

I had an accident (entirely my fault) at 2mph in a car park; £1800 of damage. Renewal was two months later and nothing changed, BUT...

A year later my wife (named driver, but with her own separate policy for her car) got a snotty message while she was shopping around, telling her off for not disclosing her £1800 accident. My insurance company had attributed it to her. We got £600 compensation between us, for data breaches.

My next renewal was interesting. They noted that the accident 14 months before was now attributed to me. They plugged it into their system, and my premium went *down* by a fair bit. And they backdated it a year. The result was that I paid an even lower premium while they refunded me for the previous overpayment over 12 months...

The thing people don't realise when using comparison sites is that it's not the quotes you're given that are important, but it's also the quotes you /aren't/ given. The number of insurers that come back with quotes can vary substantially.

Through experience I've discovered not to run quotes in the late evening, when insurers' computers are down for maintenance, because you get fewer quotes - and so the cheapest quote can be higher.

Similarly if you declare your car has a 'modification' the quotes a specific insurer gives don't just get higher, but a large number of insurers don't quote at all.

When I had a windscreen replacement and declared it to the sites, my quotes went higher than a quote without. I don't remember whether it affected the number of insurers willing to quote, but I wouldn't be surprised if any kind of 'incident' knocks a few off the list.

Protected NCB is a bit of a scam because you have to declare incidents anyway, so the fact you paid your previous insurer to maintain a magic number doesn't have much bearing on the risk you are to a new one.

I make each quote in an incognito window with a different fake name at a wrong (but nearby) address, which means they can't cross-correlate quotes. I also select the vehicle by make/model rather than registration.

You never seem to get exactly the same quote twice down to the pennies, but typically there is rough consistency when you do it a few times.

When you actually come to buy from the insurer direct (real name and address, obvs) the quote typically falls maybe 10% from the comparison price, which is probably partly commission and partly matching your licence/etc details.

Theo

Well I'm not a driver but have seen or rather felt what happens if these repairs are put off, then I'd get it done now. If chipping is an issue then he should take the cover thereafter. Cars are expensive things to keep going, or so I'm told!

Brian

I've not found this, possibly because many of the companies selling insurance are agencies - for instance, the AA, Sainsbury etc. are just agents.

Often the same insurance company will trade under a range of different brand names and usually te quotes from one of the brands can be vastly different to the quote from another of their brands.

And then there is the usual hike in price for staying loyal. As I've mentioned before, always check the renewal quote for small print changes like a hike in excess charges if you make a claim. Some companies are now advertising no price increase for the second year but further investigation reveals only on some policies that include ALL the added extras that can double the cost of the basic policy.

The rules are changing. From 1 January 2022, insurance companies are going to be obliged to offer the same deals to existing customers as to new ones.

ITYM offer the same deals to new customers as to the existing ones </mode>

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