Well it’s the usual annual debacle when coming to renew the car’s insurance. Got my renewal quote from my insurer, Hastings Direct £318.00 full comp with added driver and breakdown cover. For my MK2 1.8.
My partner decided she didn’t want to be on insurance anymore so I removed her from quote and guess what it went up to £337.95 ( really ). So I thought I would take advantage to return to Adrian Flux as I used to be a customer of theirs when I had Land Rovers and would get a bit of discount for being a club member ( you would think HA ). They quoted me £313.43 for same sought of cover. Ok I thought not a lot in it, I’ll try Saga as I am over 50 and my partners with them but I only did a ON LINE quote ( Adrian Flux I phoned )£282.00 for similar cover. At this point I thought I’ll phone Hastings Direct and challenge them as to why my quote had gone up and other insurers were cheaper, after a discussion over the type of breakdown cover I wanted they redid my quote and they reduced it from £337.95 the dearest quote of all to £209.95 without breakdown cover or £269.95 with. A saving of £68.00 on initial renewal. Of course all quotes are dependent on each drivers circumstances. Mine being pretty good with no convictions and no accidents and a max of nine years no claims. These national companies bang on about customer loyalty but then still load their prices. The reason I left Adrian Flux in the first place was because they started charging to much compared to others and I’d been with them over ten years. Insurance companies have probably saved a fortune this year on claims with not so much traffic on the roads because of Covid 19, some gave rebates but not many, I reckon all policy holders should have some sought of rebate ( maybe a years free breakdown cover would be an idea ) from their insurers, especially as we might go into another national lockdown. Ok with a little bit of work I saved £68.00 but why didn’t my Insurance provider give me that price in the first place and save the risk of losing a regular customer and customer loyalty. Same ole same ole. Year in Year out, when will they learn.
It’s their business model, there are probably many who won’t shop around and just pay the uplift.
I need to phone and have ‘the talk’ on my other car, £140 difference between renewal and best (not necessarily cheapest) other quote.
JP, what sort of mileage did you declare.
Mine is just a toy, I do maybe 2-3k per year.
Im also in my 50’s with full NCD, no accidents/convictions etc and got my renewal for £130 ish
I ask for 5,000 ltd mileage ( was that including breakdown ) I suppose it depends on post code as well.
Hiya, that’s the problem with trying to compare insurance quotes between folk. There are just too many variants to deal with;
Age of driver
Accident history
Convictions
Other named drivers details
Annual mileage
Postcode of proposer
Where vehicle is parked overnight
Actual model of car/engine size etc
SDP/commuting/business usage
Etc, etc, etc
I don’t look forward to renewal time because even if nothing has changed in the previous year,I have no idea of renewal costs (generally upwards though), until I get the notification, which I suppose is right as insurers will calculate premiums only at renewal time for individuals. Then, it all starts again, completing on line forms or questioning the renewal quote. Oh well, that’s life I suppose.
Barrie
You might find if you add your partner back in, it goes down a bit more.
It’s common knowledge (but obviously not that common!) that adding a spouse usually brings the price down, assuming they have a good driving record. I imagine their experience is simply that people who do this have lower claims costs.
As for when they will learn…well they have learnt. What they have learnt is that comparison sites mean that competition ensures there’s little profit in the rates at which new business can be acquired, so they have to retain customer for a couple of years to make money, while gently “tuning” the renewal price to get the margins up. It’s how the industry now works. I find that the first renewal is usually a small increase, the second one is probably nearer 10%, and then I have to move (again) or try to negotiate. I seem to end up pinging between LV= and quotemehappy every couple of years.
It’s a dysfunctional industry where competition doesn’t work in favour of the loyal customer. When they get a ‘no fault’ claim, the first thing they do is get their own claims management company involved. This is so they can rip off the other party’s insurer with credit hire rates of £100 a day, and encourage their own customer to make a personal injury claim because another insurer is paying (they make money from that too). Because they all do this to each other, it just puts up everybody’s premiums.
If you have a no-fault accident and the liability is clearly the other party’s, then going direct to them to claim can be a good idea. I’ve done this and they couldn’t do enough for me - they gave me a proper replacement car (which costs them £20 a day, not £100), collected and dropped off both my car and the hire car, and fixed it in 3 weeks. They knew full well that if I went via my insurer they would have been absolutely shafted.
Hastings are a bunch of jokers. Every year I renew for my son’s 1.25 Fiesta Zetec ( new driver) and it’s 3 minutes of polite but non negotiable “take a hike” chatter at which point the quote is by some miracle slashed.
I’m with Axa for the Mk1 Fully Comp, 5k per annum, usual including National Breakdown + ad-ons @£146.00 . Happy enough.
SWMBO & I are, with her 2002 Mk2.5 via Lloyds fully comp etc £180.00 for 7k miles.
One of the few advantages of being 68 maybe.
no breakdown cover for me as i have a family plan.
Postcode will have some bearing, my daughter moved out and in to her own house 2 streets away, and this postcode change affected her policy.
WF9 if it helps.
I use gocompare, sundays seem to give the best results for me and doing the quotes weeks before you need it.
I got quoted £239 fully comp on a 2004 1.8 mx5, I’m 34 with 3yncb and live in a bad post code.
The prices change daily, all depends on what data they are using, comes and goes in waves as they a tallying all the previous information to asses who is most risky on the road.
They pretty much try to get away with what they can and I know a lot of people who just accept renewals and so do they, so they chance it. For all the money made on unquestioned renewals they wouldn’t even notice people leaving them because they gave a bad renewal price.
Edit - Good to see other people with these circa £200 quotes, most people think I am lying when I tell the cost to insure an NB MX5.
I did all the comparison stuff last year and I could get to around £60 less if I changed from Admiral. That’s 2 cars and home insurance. It ended up me staying with them and they near on matched the comparison sites quotes. So with 3 policies and £20 difference/increase I stuck with them.
We do it all again this November.
Mines was just over £200 last year, fully comp, with 8000miles, the original quote was only 6000miles I phoned them and said I was getting 8000miles for the same price elsewhere, (I was only getting the 6000miles and it was the same price), they increased it to 8000 and it was £3 more than the other quote - so it was easier to stay with them, just less hassle.
I’ll be doing the insurance rounds again in about a months time, I really want it below £200 this year, as there’ll be another years NCB, but we’ll see what they offer!
Don’t just accept their quote phone them up an be creative in your “lie” and you’ll save a little bit more money on most ocassions.
Just caught a snippet on the radio 2 news that referred to ensuring that loyalty gets you the same quote as new bussiness, didn’t hear it all or properly so don’t quote me, my guess is if it is made mandatory the insurers will rub their hands together and ‘level’ things up?.. or am I just being cynical 
Let’s see what happens, I did it a bit more ringing round, prices vary wildly from over a £100 more with Direct line, to £5.00 less with Lancaster but no recovery, then Churchill seemed to have a good price of £185.92 but then wanted over £90 for recovery. Which was Green flag, but I could get that direct from them for £71.68 making a total of £257.60 just about £10.00 under the new quote from my existing insurer so I might as well stay with them as they made a reduction from £337.45 to £269.95 after phone call and agreed to put my partner back on and I get the recovery service included. Oh well will probably have to do it all again next year. But you got to try🤯
When I bought my 30AE last year I put that on my existing Direct Line policy with plenty of NCD and took out the new policy on my 4 year old ND which cost £515.00 including legal cover. This year when I got the renewal reminder and saw that it was much the same at £508.00, and not being in cloud cuckoo land because I’d got a brand new orange toy to play with, I went on to Compare the Market and got several quotes, some more, some less, and one who refused to give a quote at all. In the end I got exactly the same cover as Direct Line from Hastings for £243.00 which I thought was pretty good under the circumstances.
They defy logic sometimes.
I had a Mk2 that I insured for about £130 a year. I sold it and bought a Mk4. ‘Mazda’ insurance quoted £734. I had one SP30 on my licence at the time. I called them and asked if it was a mistake - no, the reason was no NCD. Apparently classic policies don’t count for NCD. So I said, never mind the NCD - if I was £130 risk before, how can I be a £730 risk now? No movement. LV= did it for £350. 3 years on, I’ve got it down to £214.
Interesting development on this topic… https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/105111/car-insurance-boost-drivers-loyalty-pricing-be-banned
Also made mistake last year with classic car policy, so no NCD!
However paid £202 to Direct Line on a 55 plate 2.00ltr NC on 4000 miles pa with no NCD - well pleased.
Always put wife on, even if she does not want to drive - you always get a discount.
Even if you dont earn an NCB on a classic car policy just get a letter from them confirming the number of claim free years. Any quality insurer or broker worthy of your business will accept it just the same. If any refuse just go elsewhere.
The new FCA rule of banning price inequality is just more hand holding. An insurer is a business same as energy, cable and mobile phone companies. They have very right to try and attract new customers with lower prices. It’s called competition. Anyone with a driving licence should be sensible enough to monitor their premiums and shop around. If not they only have themselves to blame. All that will happen now is everyone’s premium will remain at the higher price because the loss leading introductory price will disappear. Duh!
I bought a mk3.5. Hadn’t sold other car so needed to start again with zero NCD. £160. Once I sold other car I did another check with full NCD. £168.
Total rip off insurance companies are.
You know I couldn’t be bothered this year to chase around gathering quotes. Went straight to Admiral and asked them to try harder. I was actually surprised at the renewal prices, not OTT but I managed to get £34 off. Happy TBH and only £10 more over the 3 policies (multi policy cars/home) than last year. I just told them give it your best shot before I hit the comparison sites.
They’ve already given me £50 back during lockdown earlier this year. Could I have got it cheaper, maybe? Over the last two years renewal quotes I’ve done there hasn’t been much in it to bother.