Being one of the 'lucky' over 50's owners, I was pleasantly surprised last year with a quote from the AA for a 6000 mile, zero no claims (second car) of £227.

This year they have jacked it up to £261 (now with 1 yr NCB). Just moved to Admiral for £182. At least the difference will pay for 3/4 of a tank of fuel (lol!)

On 'lower' value insurance premiums it is easy to ignore the £50 hike as not worth the hassle but when you hunt around, that £50 can become £80 and is suddenly more noticeable.

I will never understand how it is cheaper for companies to find new business than to keep existing clients????

All I can think of is getting a new customer means one fewer customer for your competitors. Yes, some people will shop around and leave etc but I bet it's a fairly small number.

Most people can't be bothered and I guess the insurance companies know this so there's little down side in them bumping the prices up. If someone DOES shop around they nearly always drop their price anyway.

My girlfriend has been with Direct Line for YEARS and never, ever wants to get involved with shopping around. She accepts the renewal and goes about her day :(

Which is a shame as Direct Line are one of the worst for stiffing existing customers in my experience. I tend to alternate between them and whoever is cheapest on the comparison sites. My renewal went from £360 to £750 in one hit a couple of years back.

She drove the same Corsa for about 10 years and the premiums were ok. At least, not unacceptably high.

She now has a Freelander and I'm expecting the renewal to be noticeably higher when it comes through later this year. I think that might switch her on to the idea of shopping around.

oilmagnet477 wrote:

Being one of the 'lucky' over 50's owners, I was pleasantly surprised last year with a quote from the AA for a 6000 mile, zero no claims (second car) of £227.

This year they have jacked it up to £261 (now with 1 yr NCB). Just moved to Admiral for £182. At least the difference will pay for 3/4 of a tank of fuel (lol!)

On 'lower' value insurance premiums it is easy to ignore the £50 hike as not worth the hassle but when you hunt around, that £50 can become £80 and is suddenly more noticeable.

I will never understand how it is cheaper for companies to find new business than to keep existing clients????

Totally agree with this. Bloody thieves if you ask me. I always shop around or challenge the renewal quote. My Lancaster renewal quote this year for the P38 was £270 ish I got it down to under £200 by challenging the quote with Lancaster. I can’t understand why they think they can rob existing policy holders.

I've heard form others that Direct Line get expensive if you keep renewing yet I'm on my 5 th year with them and have always found the renewal quote to be within £10 or £15 of the cheapest from comparison sites. Usually if I bother to go through the details and get exactly the same coverage the difference is less or even comes out more expensive.

Shuffling around for so little every year comes under the life is too short thing. £240 fully comp this time round. Went to them after getting a £150 hike, basically doubling cost, from Lancaster! Tried the challenge and they wouldn't budge.

Thing I really don't understand is why the experience is so different for different people. Some folks get hit by silly hikes, some folks can get them to shift and some, like me, get a deal they can live with almost every year

Clive

Clive - that kind of re-enforces my original point. If you accept the renewal quote on the basis that it isn't worth it for £50 then fine, however, I did bother and saved £80. When I phoned the AA to tell them I didn't want to renew, they offered to revisit the quote. I'm afraid my answer to that one will always be the same - 'had your chance and fluffed it'

Robbo1 - "I can’t understand why they think they can rob existing policy holders." In your case, the clue is in your name........... :o)

My other half is with Direct Line as they came out cheaper than any of the others on the comparison sites. She recently changed her car from a 2004 Mercedes C180k Coupe, 1.8 litre supercharged 4 pot with a whole 143 bhp, to a 2007 Mercedes SLK280, 3.0 litre V6 with 231 bhp. I was expecting her to fall off her chair when she rang Direct Line to change the car but we were both pretty surprised. All they wanted was an extra £30 a year. Makes no sense at all.

Be careful what you wish for, I challenged my quote and it went up .... That was a multi car policy - i've had a few in the past, and apart from NFU have never been convinced this works in the insuree's favour, and just makes things even more opaque when it comes to trying to work out how they came to a particular quote.

I've had multicar from Direct Line before, but it all fell apart when we changed a couple of cars in the same year. Whenever I've looked at multicar since it hasn't been worth the difference. So far, at least. The insurance market is always shifting.

I always used to shop around every year. I found myself being hit with large hikes year on year and having to swap insurer to get a better a deal. Back then I was using more mainstream insurers. Adrian Flux were terrible for it. I bounced between them and whichever "big name" insurer came up with the best quote, taking a couple of weeks of effort to achieve savings of almost £200.

I've been with A-Plan for 3 years now. They don't seem to hike my prices every year and include things other insurers won't. Each year I get my renewal, go to the comparison sites and find the recognised companies are about the same, if not a little higher. There's always some company I've never heard of before offering a much lower price but I don't trust them. In my mind, if they're such an outlier then something can't be right. Either the price is inaccurate to make me call them at which point the price goes through the roof or when I come to make a claim it'll be a nightmare/impossible/work out badly etc.

So, I stay with A-Plan as the price compares well to other companies I recognise and they cover my offroading, don't charge extra for modifications (including the LPG kit) and let me swap the car out for free if I need to take it off the road for repairs and drive something else in the meantime.

oilmagnet477 Actually my threshold for searching new deals / switching et al for pretty much everything is £1 a week. Your £50 near enough. When dealing with that size of difference straight off a comparison site it usually seems possible to get an even better offer. What I found with the small differences was that after a fair bit of effort getting a quote for near enough exactly the same thing any differential had seriously dwindled. Original £15 or so down to £5 or less. Leaving aside the "who they?" names for exactly the same trust issues that RutlandRover has.

Of course folk like the AA are brokers not insurance companies. I'm pretty sure that they have effectively fixed costs for the actual insurance bit and set their "broker fee" by what they think the customer can be euchred out of. Which is why they are usually pretty outrageous and why they are so keen to re-negotiate. Colour me cynical but such is the inevitable endpoint of companies run for the money rather than to do the job normal folk expect by political types focused on exploiting internal rules for their next bonus and next promotion. You can just see the bonus / promotion points system -2 for loosing a customer, 1 per pound up to a £20 fee, double points above that and a gold star if you screw them out of more than £100. All the real insurance companies use similar risk assessment algorithms so the real insurance figures won't vary much. Its all down to exploiting the customer profile. Maximum profit being by charging high for low risk customers.

Clive

Renewal just come through for my zzr600.
I pay monthly these days.
It went down £2 a month
£12.60 per month over 10 months.
Bear in mind that includes broker fee of £20 and tax at £9

Insurance is about £90 a year. Cheapest so far was £80 several years ago. I don't think I'll find it cheaper as it also includes modifications :)

You must be another of us old 'uns. That's almost exactly the same as I pay for a Yamaha FZS600 Fazer. The cheapest I ever got was £79 a year with Saga but they stopped doing bike insurance.

Bummer. Devitt rushed me £126 for my Norton Commander Rotary. Officially 588 cc so counts as 600. So being an old 'un doesn't always work out. Looks like I should have done bit of searching for a better deal. But mines has the Supreme Commander modification set by Richard Negus which is pretty major, basically replacement of all suspension and running gear plus significant other stuff, and it gets tedious explaining whats been done. Discrepancy between book value £2,000 - £3,000 and replacement value or £12,000 or so!

But I wanted it right for its second 100,000 miles. Alternative being to buy a Beemer and they can't even make fuel gauge senders that work properly!

47 yo

Not surprising with the Norton.
Still not bad though :)

tanis - your moniker gives away your age (born in '72). Do you live at No 84?

Or is your birthday the 8th of April?

Lol, no and that's a coincidence

A year or two ago I was with 'More Than' and almost all my life had been with the Royal from which I think it merged. Max no claims but about three or four years ago it rocketed up every year on my P38 from about £300 to £600 for no apparent reason. So I changed to Admiral and was offered about £320 which I was happy to accept. Insurance renews in about 4 weeks so was waiting to see what would happen and today got an email quoting renewal actually £10 or so lower for the year !! Is this normal or a trick and does the big hit come next year ? Otherwise I suppose I would recommend Admiral.