Laughable insurance renewal

[Chrispy]

Evening all,

Got home to find my insurance renewal waiting for me from Chris Knott. Opened it up to find they want £989 from me for the vRS - £1087 if you pay monthly (almost £100 credit charge!).

That's for a 30 yr old with 8 years PCNB and with the wife (who's 3 years older) on there too as a named driver. Last time I paid money like that to insure a car I was 21 and driving a BMW, not 30 driving a Skoda......

The insurance is actually through Highway, a subsiduary of Liverpool Victoria. Can anyone suggest a viable alternative? I might try LV directly, or any others before I go back to Chris Knott and laugh at them. Considering they're a broker I think they should actually try to get you a better deal as opposed to just sending through stupidly high renewals like that, but perhaps I'm not being realistic. :(

Needs to be relatively modification friendly as I have declared the map and will continue to do so with the replacement insurer.

Also, as per some good advice I got from MoneySavingExpert I've got myself a Tesco 15 months interest free card so will be paying for the insurance outright on that and saving myself the stupid credit fees they all seem to want.

Thanks in advance,

Chris.

[WaveyDaveyGravy]

As you've been on Money Saving Expert I suggest you read what they say on car insurance, as good information on how to drive down your costs as you'll get anywhere.

[bigman1976]

Evening all,

Got home to find my insurance renewal waiting for me from Chris Knott. Opened it up to find they want £989 from me for the vRS - £1087 if you pay monthly (almost £100 credit charge!).

That's for a 30 yr old with 8 years PCNB and with the wife (who's 3 years older) on there too as a named driver. Last time I paid money like that to insure a car I was 21 and driving a BMW, not 30 driving a Skoda......

The insurance is actually through Highway, a subsiduary of Liverpool Victoria. Can anyone suggest a viable alternative? I might try LV directly, or any others before I go back to Chris Knott and laugh at them. Considering they're a broker I think they should actually try to get you a better deal as opposed to just sending through stupidly high renewals like that, but perhaps I'm not being realistic. :(

Needs to be relatively modification friendly as I have declared the map and will continue to do so with the replacement insurer.

Also, as per some good advice I got from MoneySavingExpert I've got myself a Tesco 15 months interest free card so will be paying for the insurance outright on that and saving myself the stupid credit fees they all seem to want

Thanks in advance,

Chris.

I would give LV a call. They've quoted me £320 for my renewal when it comes up in July. That's for 34yo male, 9+ yrs protected NCB living in a low/medium risk area. No mods on my vRS though.

[jhe]

paid skoda insurance £297 after a little bit of haggling but new car no remap, cis offered decent quotes better than the compare sites

[Lab_man]

£650ish for our Vrs 11 plate...no mods etc, also have no claims protection & £150 excess. We are both 49...wife has mentioned ish. Both have 5 years + no claims discount. Worth a mention though its cheaper for it to be in her name rather than mine, although maybne not for much longer...discrimination etc.

Ours is through Aviva...but hoping to bring that down on the next renewal.

Hope that helps

[HWMBO - Mark]

I changed from a Citroen to the vRS CR 11 Plate & Tesco wanted £550 from £220 (Citroen), I did the old meerket test & went with Axa for £310 - 35 with 8yrs & te wife also - Both with a clear history. Crazy man !

[pastiche]

With LV for our Elegance £327 includes SWIMBO.

[jrw]

Im dreading mine in August. Mine was £450 last year - 6 yrs NCB, 28 with a highish risk postcode, swmbo who is 27.

[Chrispy]

Just had a quote from LV - £845 but that's with a £250 excess. CK is zero voluntary excess. Maybe that's what's needed to bring the cost down a tad.

M&S wouldn't quote online (must be the remap) and Admirals site keeps crashing. :(

LV is looking promising right now. Tried it without the wife as a named driver and it went up by about £100. Interesting.

Next up are Brentacre and Adrian Flux me thinks but those are phone call jobbies for during the day. As is calling Chris Knott for asasistance on a cheaper quote.

[Rob JS]

Im dreading mine in August. Mine was £450 last year - 6 yrs NCB, 28 with a highish risk postcode, swmbo who is 27.

Im the same as you, mine was also £450 last year and has gone up over 100 quid. I rang the insurer and ended up with a "loyalty credit" of 75.00 quid plus a lowered price for changing a few details. Result! That was with more than.

[Delacroix]

Well last month my £1050 renewal (£750 year before and with no changes/claims/penalties) from More Than was the cheapest I could find despite using multiple comparison sites, direct quotes and brokers. And this is in a middle of the road postcode (in insurance terms) with a garage!

[Chrispy]

Tried Tesco - All fine until you add the remap which you have to call them to do as there's no option on their site. At which point they decline the policy. Wonderful. :(

At this rate all insurers won't cover modifications like that and remaps will be forced into non-declaration territory, or people won't have them done.

Annoying as hell as I pay a lot of money a month for my car, it's my propery to do with as I wish yet you get faced with this nonsense. I HATE insurance companies. It's a license to rip people off, and in the UK (rip off Britain) it must be bliss.

[jrw]

Just got a quote from More Than - £600

[HotRod]

Similar thing with me - Quoted a over £1,000 from Chris Knott for a 36 yr old with 10 yrs NCB Protected on an Octy Elegance 10 plate with no mods, 1 no fault claim in 10 yrs and no convictions..

LV (via Confused.com) came in at £721 yearly

Got a quote from sky for £442.

All of these are one off payments (so will be more for monthly).

But seriously - shopping around is the only way, unless you have money burning a hole in your bank account.

[jrw]

Just fired off an email to Sky....If they don't come up good, i will have some serious saving to do!

[ednmra]

I don't suppose you can use compare sites for non standard cars, can you?

LV surprised me this year by sending me a renewal almost exactly the same as compare site "new business" - about £230 for a 1.8TSi - no remaps though!!

It wasn't worth me changing companies - first time for about 10 years that I've renewed.

[jrw]

I never find compare sites any good!

[Jamesf76]

I just renewed my insurance last month, previous year was £265 renewal was £380 via admiral. Done the usual comparison surfingand got nowhere cheaper. Phoned them up and got a loyalty discount taking it back to £315 so proof that they can help out a bit. Standard vrs tdi 2007 plate, me 34yr old max ncb no points, wife 32 3 points for cd10 she's got a touran sport and that was only £250 to renew but pretty much same as last year.

[59vrs]

You should try living in North Manchester - I had to pay £850 for my standard (ie: unmodified) VRS CR at the start of April :'( - that was after extensive shopping around, ended up renewing with Chris Knott, managed to get the premium down from £900 by increasing the excess from £200 to £250. Renewal was up from £700 the previous year.

And no, I'm not a boy racer - 34yrs old with 9 years protected no claims bonus and a clean licence, 11,000 miles a year, so not high mileage either :no:

[Welsh_kai_boy]

Live outside Cardiff, 10 plate FL VRs 18K a year with class one business use, £550 with Directline.

[HotRod]

Just fired off an email to Sky....If they don't come up good, i will have some serious saving to do!

Best of luck mate.

[Chrispy]

It seems to be the way this year, all policies have shot up and they just expect people to cough up. Admittedly the map doesn't help things, neither does my wifes parking dink a few years back but its still way too high for a 30 year old married father of 1 driving a Skoda. I mean come on.....

Going to try Sky and also see if Chris Knott (current insurer) can massage the figures a bit.

[billyd]

Got my renewal through from Direct Line and it had gone up to over £1000. By shopping around managed to get it down to £470 with Tesco insurance. Interestingly when I rang Chris Knot they asked what my cheapest quote was and when i told them it was with Tesco they said they couldn't compare against Tesco insurance so i had to give them my next cheapest quote. 32 Years old standard 140CR Elegance 6 years ncb (one conviction for speeding oops ). Ironically I have found fully comp is cheaper then TPF&T, a few years ago to insure and old Merc it was £600 third party but only £300 fully comp.

[swiftstu]

For my money Sky insurance is always worth the phone call. I was with them for 5 years whilst in the Toyota Supra owners club and they were constantly cheapest. Now it seems they are doing the same with Briskoda.

£400 on the nose, for 31 yr old, married, with a little 'un (wifey on policy also). So as a pretty good comparison the original Poster, and quite a saving.

[ednmra]

I never find compare sites any good!

I think they can be a good pointer. First they tell you if your previous company's renewal quote is outrageous, then they show you where to head for an alternative i.e. what you should roughly expect to pay.

I had a weird one with home and contents insurance this year, that maybe illustrates the companies view. I got a big premium hike with BM (part of Halifax) for no good reason - no claims etc. I found very good alternatives, over £200 cheaper, on compare sites. I phoned BM to tell them I would not renew. So they cancelled the DD while I was on the phone, then put me on to a Halifax advisor, who went through all the details again and gave me an identical policy at the compare site price, near enough. Go figure.

Same with most car dealings I find usually, and yet my LV car policy renewal only went up about £3. You just got to shop around - it seems like nothing has a "real" price these days.