Not specific to Kodiaq (apologies) - but dealership insurance excess to test drive a car.

[mantrahalos]

I'm a 50 year old bloke - so I've test driven a few cars in my lifetime. 

Today a Skoda dealer wanted me to sign up to a £1000 excess to test drive a car for 30 minutes.  Is this reasonable/normal?  I test drove a car from the same dealership 3 years ago for a whole day with no excess.  
I declined the test drive. 

 

I've discounted 3 alternatives to the Kodiaq today - so looks like I will be staying with Kodiaq - 

 

These were
Seat Tarracco - very similar obviously - but not quite as nice to sit in.
VW Tiguan - nowhere near as spec'ed up for the money you have to spend
Volvo XC60- I love it and want one - but have to face the facts that it is too expensive. 

 

Cheers. 

M.




 

Edited 21 August, 2021 by mantrahalos

[Kenny R]

Never had any excess to pay for test drive before but my dealer has £750 excess for courtesy cars.

[Yogi-Bear]

1 hour ago, mantrahalos said:

Volvo XC60- I love it and want one - but have to face the facts that it is too expensive

Really? I’ll admit the R Design in white looks like a stormtrooper from the front… but it’s cramped inside and nowhere near as nice as the Kodiaq. Also, Volvo dealers tend to do massive discounts - around £7k on an XC60 before you’ve even started to haggle.

 

As for your main point though - no, never been asked to agree to an excess for a test drive.

[olderman1]

Tell your current dealer to do one and visit another dealer !

[Routemaster1461]

My daughter and I went to a Renault dealer and was required to sign a document before she took the car for a test drive. When we came back she told me that there was a huge excess on the document. I seem to recall £2500, but I may be wrong. I'll correct if it is wrong and I remember.

 

I have had to have quite a few loan cars and I believe the agent I use has a £250 excess. My own insurance covers me for loan cars and I think that that has an excess of £400. I used to use my insurance as the excess was cheaper but now it seems to be the other way round.

[SinglePointSafety]

Yep, have done some test drives recently (for potential replacements for our 2nd car) and £1K excess seems to be common for unaccompanied drives. But biggest gripe? One dealership insisted on an accompanied test drive, with an unvaccinated 15-year old salesperson who offered to "wear a mask if you really want" (OK, he might have been a bit older... but.....). We respectfully declined......

 

Regarding XC60 (and indeed pretty much any car) - best advice is to visit some car broker sites such as Carfile, DriveTheDeal etc and get a good idea of what realistic selling prices are. When we eventually settled on our Kodiaq 2 years ago, after discounts the price difference between a Volvo XC40 and XC60 was < £2K for like-for-like spec, which was tempting. No idea why the XC60 - at the time - attracted such enormous discounts. Kodiaq was bought via a broker with ~20% discount.

[Routemaster1461]

2 hours ago, Routemaster1461 said:

My daughter and I went to a Renault dealer and was required to sign a document before she took the car for a test drive. When we came back she told me that there was a huge excess on the document. I seem to recall £2500, but I may be wrong. I'll correct if it is wrong and I remember.

 

I have had to have quite a few loan cars and I believe the agent I use has a £250 excess. My own insurance covers me for loan cars and I think that that has an excess of £400. I used to use my insurance as the excess was cheaper but now it seems to be the other way round.

 

Just checked with my daughter. I was right, it was £2500. Seems like an excessive excess to me!

[mantrahalos]

Thanks all.  very useful.  I'm going to another dealer later today.

In terms of pricing - I'm using Autoebid  -
The XC60 is discounted by about 9% but still coming in at around £40k with a basic spec + metallic paint and no other options.

For comparison the Kodiaq is coming in with a 19% discount, with Drive the deal a little higher. 

M.



 

[xspartx]

13 hours ago, mantrahalos said:

I'm a 50 year old bloke - so I've test driven a few cars in my lifetime. 

Today a Skoda dealer wanted me to sign up to a £1000 excess to test drive a car for 30 minutes.  Is this reasonable/normal?  I test drove a car from the same dealership 3 years ago for a whole day with no excess.  
I declined the test drive. 

 

I've discounted 3 alternatives to the Kodiaq today - so looks like I will be staying with Kodiaq - 

 

These were
Seat Tarracco - very similar obviously - but not quite as nice to sit in.
VW Tiguan - nowhere near as spec'ed up for the money you have to spend
Volvo XC60- I love it and want one - but have to face the facts that it is too expensive. 

 

Cheers. 

M.




 

 

I did a similar comparison (to see if things had changed in the last couple of years- they hadn't).]

 

Tarracco- felt a bit cramped to my eyes (and THAT badge - awful plasticky oversized fisher price etc etc)

Tiguan- A personal opinion but the layout and quality of materials is worse than the Kodiaq imo.

 

XC60 is a smaller car no?

[skomaz]

The dash design put me of the tarracco...   The kit is bette but I preferred the kodiaq as somewhere to be...

[john999boy]

Not quite the same but I’ve just had my car serviced and when booking it in was asked if I wanted a courtesy car - with, I believe a £10 insurance cost. There maybe was an excess involved but I can’t quite remember. I said that my current insurance would cover me so was asked to bring my licence and cover note when dropping the car off.
 

Doing the online checkin the night before didn’t ask for anything and only my licence was checked on the day.

Presumably I had an honest face and verification wasn’t necessary?

 

[SurreyJohn]

I had it when I had car serviced (pre Covid), courtesy car was £12 insurance or £500 excess.  But it was explained that it was if I caused any damage.  Not if someone else caused the accident (then no excess payable)

 

The justification was that they had a few bad drivers doing test drives and over one car a month was being damaged so dealership insurance cost had gone up hugely.

 

I can see it both ways though, if you are offered a £1000 excess, or every new car will get £50 less discount, to cover increased insurance premium (and ultimately it has to be paid for so really a case of do you want it hidden or not).

 

Of course if you choose not to do a test drive, or don’t crash it, then it’s free

 

[mantrahalos]

I went to the very nice Marshalls Skoda in Letchworth this afternoon.

 

They were superb, and let me drive the 1.5tsi.  No time limit or mileage limit - Just checked my license - confirmed I was insured, and told me to enjoy the car.

 

Nice chap in there too. 

 

M.

 

 

[olderman1]

1 hour ago, mantrahalos said:

I went to the very nice Marshalls Skoda in Letchworth this afternoon.

 

They were superb, and let me drive the 1.5tsi.  No time limit or mileage limit - Just checked my license - confirmed I was insured, and told me to enjoy the car.

 

Nice chap in there too. 

 

M.

 

 

 

And that's exactly how it should be, well done. Did you like it ?

[mantrahalos]

2 hours ago, olderman1 said:

 

And that's exactly how it should be, well done. Did you like it ?

Not really - It was the 1.5 TSI DSG - I tried hard to like it, but it is hard to switch to it when you have been driving a  TDI DSG .  There is no way I'd be able to make the switch and be happy with the choice. 

 

 

[olderman1]

56 minutes ago, mantrahalos said:

Not really - It was the 1.5 TSI DSG - I tried hard to like it, but it is hard to switch to it when you have been driving a  TDI DSG .  There is no way I'd be able to make the switch and be happy with the choice. 

 

 

I can see why you'd find it lacking. The 2.0TSi is a better proposition in comparison, but not very economical.

[skomaz]

When we drove the 1.4 dsg we found it was a bit lethargic and didn't really get on with the dsg.  The manual was better and suited us well coming from a tdi