UK Insurance

[TJS]

I need to get the Z1 insured, MOT and taxed.

Any recommendations ? Limited mileage (1,500 miles) flexible with excess (£250) car is garaged and not used in winter. Adrian Flux renewal on above basis is £280. Sole driver, no claims, no points, wrong side of 50 (and no, Saga won't cover the car!) and I don't live in Damascus or Baghdad.


TJS

[Pat Slade]

Sounds average to me. My recent renewal with Carol Nash was £220. Garaged, 1,500 miles per annum, £250 excess, Foreign Travel, Legal Expenses, Hertfordshire.

Pat

[Robert T]

Might be a different category, but I just renewed the frog for £168 for 3000 miles with 90 days European cover included - I use a small insurance broker, but the policy is Towergate's Cherished Car and they are underwritten by Norwich Union. It is a guaranteed value policy and you do need to submit photos of the car every three years. Cover includes social domestic and pleasure, so if I actually commuted, I could use it for commuting.

Cheers R.

[andyhallas]

Hagarty are worth a look.

The policy is very solid and they have always been the lowest quote I have found.

[JoeyD]

Iv always found Swift Cover the cheapest. 300 for me, fully comp. 500 excess (all in) 5yrs no claims and im 29... My mum uses them too and she drives a Scenic. cheapest by miles. they aren't very specialist though so im sure someone like Adrian Flux might be better as they can tailor it to your needs and it might be a more "personal" experience for things like guaranteed value of the car etc.. Money supermarket search might be worthwhile too.

[TJS]

Thanks for the feedback.

Renewed with Adrian flux at £275. Hagerty quoted £359 and broker with tower gate policy £523

MOT booked for Friday, Silverstone looking like a possibility !

TJS

[Ian M]

Just renewed my insurance with A-Plan ( 01635 874 646 ) for £188.00. Mileage set at 3000 p/a. That's over £110 pounds cheaper than the cheapest I found last year. Excess is £150 and £75 for the windscreen.

[Racing Tortoise]

It seems to be very postcode-sensitive like normal insurance. Notwithstanding that I pay an arm and a leg to garage my Z1 (far far more than the difference it makes to the insurance), being in London just seems to load the policy.

My insurance is up for renewal and the renewal quote of £320 from Hagerty seems to be the best available - the others named above couldn't get close.

[Jet]

Never accept renewal quotes, always start policies from new and take advantage of the discount given to "new" clients. I go through the same rigmarole with home, contents, car and pet insurance. The renewal quote is always higher, I cancel, then ring back or take out a new policy online and pay less. Renewed with Buckingham at £200, £100 XS, they reduced the 100% markup down to 20% after complaining.

[dreamchaser]

I have just renewed mine with 'Saga' for £175.00 as I am also the 'wrong' side of 50. See you all at Silverstone next week.

[Racing Tortoise]

In my view you should pray you never have an accident. My mother was insured with Saga until somebody hit her car whilst it was legally parked, rendering it undrivable. Saga contracts out all its claims handling to a claims management firm, who we found aggressive and unhelpful in their approach, and an apparently useless firm of solicitors in Croydon (ie not remotely local) who couldn't litigate their way out of a wet paper bag from what I can ascertain, and you have no option but to use both. The ensuing mess with inflated courtesy car rates (something like £3k for two weeks' use was claimed by the claims management firm and then promptly contested by the other insurers), being forced to use a Ford dealership to repair an Audi (who did a shocking job with the paint match), and being forced to accept 50/50 liability in circumstances where my mother was in fact wholly innocent, was so appalling that I very nearly reported the lot of them to the regulators. My mother found the whole process totally confusing, unhelpful, exhausting and very upsetting. And this is a service aimed at older, supposedly more vulnerable drivers! Suffice to say no one in my family would never touch Saga again.

[TJS]

Sound very familiar

4 months ago i was traveling on a dual carriageway and moved to the right hand land to turn right at a roundabout. Stopped at the roundabout, in the left hand lane going straight on is a recovery truck towing a car on a small trailer. Both moved off together when the van decided to "straight line" the roundabout forcing me to stop and the wheel of the trailer sliced along the left side of my car neatly taking out both tyre valves. The driver was rather sheepish and clearly in the wrong, after contacting his base was told not to admit liability and leave the scene as soon as possible after providing a pre printed accident report form. No damage to the trailer !!

Now the fun begins.

I contact my broker, not interested, contact the insurer, not interested but referred to an accident management company Accident First Direct who then pass the to claim to their sub contractor Drive Assist, who pass me to an accident repair firm 200 miles away!

I am not injured, I do not need to make a personal accident claim, I don't need an Audi courtesy car, just my car collected and repaired. If you are not pursuing an injury claim via a nominated solicitor and don't need a replacement car (they insist on taking your credit card for a £1,500 per week rental) then no one is interested. After 3 weeks the claim had been deleted from the system and nothing happens. The AA insurers counter claim for a new trailer claiming I tried to overtake the van on the right, which was correct, it was a dual carriageway and I was turning right ! My wife spent many hours over several weeks getting the situation resolved. After 3 months the car was sent to a national car repairer who to be honest did a fantastic job with new panels, and new wheels. Total cost £2,000 and my excess paid. Nothing heard of since from any of the parties I am insured with, other than the accident is listed on a database as being my fault. I guess everyone tries to make money from commissions and bumping up the value of the claim, no wonder premiums are so high.

My first ever accident in 35 years of driving and not my fault - biggest mistake ? I didnt stop the car behind and ask the driver to provide a witness statement. No independent witness, no valid claim ! End of !

[Racing Tortoise]

An independent witness doesn't necessarily help because the law can be an utter ass and seems skewed in the favour of defendants.

In our case, we had a very credible one whose written testimony entirely backed my mother's case. However, because the offending motorist refused to admit liability to his insurers (although he had at the time), his insurers refused to pay out (other than on a 50/50 basis which we naturally had rejected) which resulted in my mother's insurers sueing his insurers (which they insisted upon doing in the name of the insured driver - ie my mother) to recover their loss. And if you sue someone, (i) you the plaintiff are forced to attend court and (ii) the defendant can get the case moved to their local court for their convenience, which the defendant promptly did. And which, because he was a tourist, this turned out to be several hundred miles away in the north of England. The fact that the accident happened in my mother's local town and that she was the injured party was apparently irrelevant and something our Saga-appointed lawyers were unable to resolve.

The upshot of all of this was that both my mother and her witness would have had to travel half way across England (5 hours by car or 7 hours and 5 changes by train!), which because of court timings involves an overnight stay near the court, and costs awarded for attending court are capped at £50 even if you win. You'll be very lucky if your witness is suitably civic-minded to agree to do that! As such, it didn't seem economically viable to contest the case - I worked out that the difference in premiums my mother would pay with a 50/50 claim on her insurance record would be less than the cost in terms of money, time and sheer unpleasantness of having to attend court to contest, particularly if there was a risk the witness would (understandably) refuse to attend, so through gritted teeth and boiling blood we had to agree 50/50 fault on something where my mother was entirely innocent.

[sfh3l]

I'm a bit late onto this topic (bless me father, for it is a long time since my last confession!).

I rate Hagerty very highlyand I can't understand why they quoted you such a high premium. I insure all of my 'Classics' on one policy, with decent agreed values and the obvious limited mileages (mostly 3,000 p.a.) and the whole lot came to just under £500 this year. Without boring you, this is 5 cars with agreed values of £45,000, £40,000, £25,000, £20,000 and £12,000 respectively and permissible mileages of 3,000, 3,000, 1,500, 3,000 and 1,500 and the policy includes the usual buy-back and also European cover, with European Breakdown included.

True, I haven't had a claim (thank god!), but their staff are all very helpful and generally interested in Classics, the policy is through Hiscox, who have an excellent reputation and the price seems a steal compared to the £359 you were quoted for the Z1 alone. I wonder if you might be better advised to put another classic on there perhaps? (TVR or Moggie spring to mind).

Another bonus with Hagerty is that their UK office is just down the road from us at Paulerspury......