It's that time of year again, and I've been quoted 950 quid to renew my insurance on a 250 quid vehicle.

Who's the current favourite for insurance?

i dont know about your insurances over there but here in Australia we have bomb insurance and thats what i cover my vehicle with , basically it only covers the other party not me . it's about 150+ odd dollars for the year and you get 20 million cover for the other side , but if you want to your vehicle on top of that , say another 10.000 to cover your car its open slather as to how much that will cost . it can easily be 3 4 5+ times the cost for what amounts to a small percentage of the actual cover on the policy . insurance is a blatant rip off in my opinion . if you have a new car that would be different , also the cost would be different to .

I've got a trade policy that covers me fully comp for any vehicle I own or in my custody up to a value of £10k per vehicle and when that came up for renewal the premium had gone through the roof. I list any that I own, or will be with me for more than 14 days, on the Motor Insurers Database and the broker told me it was because I had 2 Range Rovers listed and insurers don't like Range Rovers due to the number of them that get stolen. I explained to him that it is the later ones that get stolen and mine were 25 and 27 years old so highly unlikely to be stolen as they don't have the stupid keyless entry systems and the chances or them being stolen to order to be stripped for spares or exported to Africa was pretty remote. He spoke to the underwriters and got them to agree to renew at the same price as long as I didn't have any more modern ones.

For the average user it is probably better to go for a limited mileage classic car policy as long as you don't do huge mileages. Best bet for them are the likes of Adrian Flux, Footman James or Abbeyfields. Abbeyfields have had good reports from others that have tried them and they will accept a P38 as a classic car.

All insurance prices have gone up this year, they're using the "cost of living crisis" as an excuse to massively increase their profits (just like every other company)

Last year i was paying £250, the renewal came thru at 450 from direct line. My Skoda went from 350 to 650. They both renew at the same time.

Ran thru the usual comparison sites, managed to get the RR insured for £280 and the Skoda for £450.

Aragorn wrote:

All insurance prices have gone up this year, they're using the "cost of living crisis" as an excuse to massively increase their profits (just like every other company)

Last year i was paying £250, the renewal came thru at 450 from direct line. My Skoda went from 350 to 650. They both renew at the same time.

It seems a common theme with Direct Line. Last year I paid £700 for insurance on my Jaguar S-type & I just got the proposal for the renewal at over £1,000. It was expensive because I added my wife when she was learning to drive & ironically she doesn't want to drive the Jag now. I will give LV a call as they insured me previously but refused to insure my wife with a provisional licence. Funnily enough the insurance on our Smart ForTwo went up from £280 to £310 when she passed her test. She is quite happy driving the P38 both in the UK & France. The P38 is French registered & insured at about €500.

I'd been with direct line for quite a few years, and until this year the renewals have been very sane. Always competitive. Unlike Admiral, who in the past tempted me in with a cheap multi-car policy, only to jack the prices up the next year. This year though they've gone off the rails a bit.

Read an interesting article about Admiral group recently, and it was saying that despite losing thousands of customers due to the price hikes, they're making more money than before, so dont see any need to lower their prices to be more competitive.

Insurance going up after passing a test is quite typical. A learner driver is supervised by someone experienced, one who has passed no longer is, so the risk increases substantially.

LV proposed £589.36 for the Jag. I got that via www.comparethemarket.com so nabbed meal offers & cinema tickets for the next year. Prima, company that I had never heard of was cheapest at £476.71 with LV second cheapest then several other major companies like the AA & Sheila's Wheels at just under £600. I decided to give the unknown company a miss. Interestingly I'm pretty sure that LV never used to appear on comparison sites.

Admiral have obviously changed their business model this year . . . and lost a bundle of customers in the process, including me. They claim increased profitability in that the increase in prices has sort of exceeded the lost revenue from those departing. Well, that may hold for the first year but it appears that they are shedding low risk customers (who but only high risk will pay their prices now) so Admiral will see whether their new business model ‘holds water’ over the next few years as the repair costs come in!

I had a full multi (four) vehicle and house insurance policy with them for many years the renewal premium of which they increased by 44% this year - no claims ever with them. I had become accustomed to ringing them up each year and going through the stately dance of getting renewal premiums reduced to a sensible level but they held firm this year believing they had done me a favour by getting the increase down to a mere 20%. So I went elsewhere for everything.

Comparison web sites meant I could easily get the same cover by doing a bit of work myself for the same cost or, indeed, much less. I then tried a broker and they came up trumps and say they will do the leg work for me each year - we’ll see. Cars and house insurance premiums 10% less than negotiated only 20% higher Admiral price for better cover all round.

My Volvo hybrid has jumped up from £785 to £1323. I am with Adrian Flux.
They are saying that there is an all round general increase plus the risk of a battery fire with my hybrid.
Apparently all electric cars and motorhomes have gone through the roof.

Jeez, that's more than I pay for a trade policy that covers any number of cars. No restrictions on hybrid or full electric cars either, although they won't cover steam powered vehicles or kit cars though.

My Skodas electric, and its increase was more or less inline with everything else.

The statistics show EV's are LESS likely to go on fire than an ICE, which isnt really a surprise, given the ICE is the one carrying around vast amounts of flammable liquid mixed with high temperatures.

These companies are all just making up whatever excuse they fancy to avoid saying "yeah we just want to make more profit".

Busy this morning getting alternative quotes for my Volvo diesel hybrid.
Got it finally for £605 fully comp from Churchill and cancelled Adrian Flux (Ageon) within the 14 day cooling off period.
P38 is due soon.

Just insured me P38 £310 with 8000mls

just had my quote on my 06 l320 sport
it's bounced from 400 for the year to just under a grand

Just had a phone call from A-Plan.

£394 this year, up from £250 last year. Annoying as A-Plan have generally been good the last few years. Excellent deal on my two rather esoteric motorcycles earlier on in the year so I was hoping Range Rover would be the same. Lady said lots of insurers will no longer cover Land Rovers of any sort due to high costs or repair and high theft rates.

Not due until 8 try October so time to get searching.

Clive

Further to yesterdays post I spent a bit of time on the comparison sites and got rather better results. Decent selection around £270 to £320 for 5,000 miles year.

Just need to hack through the jungle of excesses and add ons. AXA seem to be the lowest although the logic of offering 4 sub-brands with different costs for what appears to be the same thing defeats me.

Car is year 2000, 4.0 HSE.

Clive

Sticking the P38 on a classic policy was around a third as much as the lowest comparison site quotes (and with agreed value etc) - as for increases this year, the best online quote for a four-year-old L405 was £9k - they really don’t want the business!

Philip wrote:

the best online quote for a four-year-old L405 was £9k - they really don’t want the business!

They know that within a matter of months it will be in a container heading for Africa or Russia......

A few have gone from around me in town - think there are methods to physically prevent the tailgate cut CAN injection thefts, but you really shouldn’t have to…

The problem is the keyless entry and ignition. Having worked in RF all my working life and being shown how it works, the first time I saw it my reaction was how insecure it is. A £25 from eBay SDR and a laptop is all that is needed to fool the car into thinking the key is there. I know it isn't the only car that uses it but it is one of the most popular ones to steal to order or to steal to strip for spares. I presume the key doesn't have to be put in a hole on the dash somewhere, it just has to be in the car, otherwise it would be reasonably simple to disable the keyless part.