Safe Speed Forums

Just been doing a search for some cheaper insurance and am surprised to find that in several instances fully comp is cheaper the TPFT. Now I know that trying to understand insurance underwriters is a sure path to madness but this seems crazier than most.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Weird! As someone with a car whose market value tends to be similar to the annual premium, I've never even bothered looking at fully comp! Perhaps I should? I'm currently paying £99 3rd Part Fire & Theft with (of all places!) Autotrader! I wonder if it's because people who pay fully-comp are likely to be the more responsible members of the motoring world with more to loose than the spotty-faced hooligans who can only just stump up the cash for 3rd party only on their chavved-out Corsas!?

Like you, my car is only worth a few hundred so fully comp would seem to be a waste of money. However I always price it because the windscreen cover can be useful.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I'm sure it's exactly as Mole conjectures; the insurers want to use as many factors as possible to assess their risk, and if the statistics show that, over the years, those who take out comprehensive insurance are a lower risk than those who take out TPFT or TPO then they'll use that to factor their pricing. I doubt that this pricing anomaly will apply to drivers that have been identified as higher risk based on other factors.

Additionally, I suspect that having a low value car may also contribute. The total-loss value of your car will slide the price of comprehensive insurance, where the others types would not be expected to change (based on value alone).

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

Indeed, the insurers look at the actual claims record of people who take out particular types of policy, rather than what they think it should be. Obviously those with low-value cars who take out fully comp insurance have a better record than those who go with TPFT.

Another counter-intuitive fact is that insurers will give a lower premium to any male who puts a female on his policy as a named driver, regardless of how little driving experience she has.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Last year I discovered that my car was cheaper to insure for 'social and commuting' than 'social only'.



Mind you they virtually give me car insurance these days for some reason: just had quotes of as little as £240 fully comp for my Group 17 hot hatch.

Ditto. Insuring my 3 Litre engined Beemer for c.£200 a year fully comp is one of the few benefits associated with growing old!

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Hmmm. I'm definitely going to get some fully-comp quotes next time then! I had to replace the windscreen last year and I very nearly scrapped the car! It's quite rare and Autoglass wanted over £500! I eventually got National Windscreens to quote £250 but then they came out and refused to do it! I imagine they were scared of finding a load of rust in the pillars once they'd got the old one out. I ended up buying the screen off them for £100 and fitting it myself, but it's not a job I'd ever fancy doing again!

As Peter says, having Mrs Mole on the policy seems to save me a few quid too - and, I believe, having school-age kids seems to help too (although on balance, I've found they tend to cost more than they save in the long run)!

I was told that fully comprehensive would end up cheaper in the long run because of the 'no claims bonus' thing.
The first insurance I got was cheapest if I added both of my parents to it! Since then it hasn't been cheaper to add either.
One thing I found out recently is that 'no claims bonus' is per insurance policy, so if you have two cars and (as I found out because the first insurance company said their policy covered me to drive 'all other cars' but they were lying on the large print and that was only cars which I didn't own...) you have to insure them both then the 4 years 'no claims bonus' in use on one car can't be used on the other.

I have only just realised that the opposite would of course work, if you were to buy 5 cheap-to-insure cars and insure them fully comprehensive for 1 year you would get 5 years 'no claims bonus' pretty quickly.

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Andrew.

Car insurance is operated differently here so direct comparisons are unrealistic. Third Party Compulsory Insurance must be obtained before the vehicle can be re-registered (= taxed), must last for the period of registration, transfers with ownership of the vehicle and cannot be cancelled unless the vehicle registration is cancelled first. Clearly third party property (TPP) or comprehensive insurance is purchased separately and covers different things. Costs of cars and repairs vary between countries.

Almost all advertising of car insurance here is about benefits; how quick and caring their service is and rarely about price. It is normal for Comprehensive/TPP to cover any legal driver (exotics may be different). I am only asked about regular drivers (more than once a week) on renewal. Most insurers offer lifetime no-claims and optional excess levels. I carry an extra 1500 dollar excesses because it saves me nearly 50% of the premium and the pay back is less than 3 years. As I am a very infrequent claimant I am way ahead.

Our policies tend to be less particular; who cares about a few speeding tickets? or who drives it. Over complexity brings its own costs. Most companies payout quickly without quibble; those who quibble get a filthy reputation and lose business. Most companies will chase the at fault driver for the excess. I got tapped on the rear bumper 15 years ago and was told to get two quotes and was authorised by phone to get it fixed - no paperwork and 100% covered as they recovered the excess.

My only claim for hitting something (as opposed to being hit) was over 30 years ago when a Wallaby (a marsupial not a rugby player ) jumped in front of me.

20 years ago Insurance companies were obnoxious, trying to wriggle out of paying or slapping customers with loss of cover or benefits but they learned that the people could take their revenge an it pays them to be fair and reasonable.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I read the attempts to get the lowest price but in my experience I cannot afford cheap tyres or cheap insurance.

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.

That's a snappy aphorism (you must read a lot of Oscar Wilde) but it simply isn't true. If I am offered the identical product or service at two different prices then I can see no point in applying your philosophy and buying the more expensive

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I've crossed a rubicon now: At 36, I pay substantially less than my 73 yr old father for insurance, which riles him somewhat... latest quote I've had = £220!!!

Oscar Wilde is not my style: I do my horizontal dancing with sheilas, blokes are good for serious sessions!

You are arguing like Abercrombie in his various guises: if you bother to read in context cheap is cheap and nasty. Buying cheap and nasty is going to give you grief; cheap tyres can kill you, cheap insurance can bankrupt you. Getting the best deal for quality however is highly commendable.

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.

If you said what you meant - poor quality tyres can kill you: inadequate insurance can bankrupt you then I wouldn't have to argue that way. Conflating "cheap" with "low quality" is a non starter in the British marketplace.

My local garage can supply me with Pirelli or Bridgestone tyres for less than the cost of unbranded tyres at a major national chain. Will they kill me? The AA can offer me identical insurance cover to my current insurer at half the cosr. Will that bankrupt me?

[

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

We shop around. So far we keep with Fortis/Zurich/Cornhill for all our toys. Of the three - Fortis seem to be best deal for us. We insure via a High Street broker. We think this better given ANPR und carelessness in updates. Staff in the local insurance "shoppe" know us by name und sight. They just type up the account without need for our prompt. We also know a lot more insurers mistakes from our gentle chats und we know we are best to budget to pay up in full than spread out via DD over the year as result of this. We were also told that the broker does the updates on fails to pay on instalment und not the actual insurer. This may be a loophole of flaw in ANPR . I am still trying to work out overall implications in mind here based on conversation with broker when I renewed insurances for all our collective toys last month. I go off what I am told by those who know in real flesh und blood meeting . und not the internet unverified .

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A distinct touch of pedantry here. In the first two and a bit decades of my life in England cheap implied nasty; in the next four and a bit decades here cheap=nasty. In my fairly frequent visits back to the UK cheap still implies nasty. The same applies in most countries where I have been and got sufficient grasp of local custom. I see no reason for you to quibble about this usage especially in the context in which it was used.

On the other hand obtaining a quality product at a discount, preferably not of the five fingered kind, is admirable however you should be acutely aware that discounts can, but not always, involve seconds quality or products made in "alternate" production units.

A good rule in life is "Choose by quality first; price second"

I hope you are not like a person of my aquaintance who boasts of paying one cent per litre less for fuel but drives a round trip of 10 kilometres to do so. His 50 cent saving costs him at least three dollars in petrol!

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.

I have won medals for it . I should have used the phrase less expensive rather than cheaper in my OP



Indeed. Two further aphorisms spring to mind.
The quality is remembered when the price is forgotten
If you pay 10% more than what is needed to satisfy your requirement you have wasted 10%.. If you spend 10% less you have wasted all your money.



Not at all. I try to frequent the more expensive independents when buying fuel. The queues are shorter and the service is better. One local garage took the trouble to phone me at work to tell me I had left my petrol cap behind. Sadly that garage is no longer there, driven out of business by the remorseless pressure from supermarkets and petrol company outlets. Independant garages are a very rare thing these days in England.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Some insurers are better than others.

For example our experiences with Markerstudy show that if the case is even vaguely difficult to handle they'll just not bother, and instead pay out, wiping out your no-claims bonus for the next year, for example when my GF was hit by an uninsured driver and we knew her correct address via the police Markerstudy had no interest in going after them individually for a claim. You also have to chase them constantly if you need to get anything done.
Direct Line have a policy where if you are hit by an uninsured or untraceable driver it will not affect your no-claims bonus, random acts of vandalism will also not affect it. I've not had any experience of making a claim with them yet.
Equity Red Star have a particularly nasty clause in their protected no-claims scheme. Normally a claim means you lose 2 years NCB. A typical protected NCB will give you a certain number of lives and then you start losing NCB. With ERS you get one claim, and if you make a second ALL the claims count against you. I had 6 years NCB when I went with ERS and in that year I was rear ended once and had my car stolen twice. They wanted to remove all my NCB for this as they hadn't had the money back from the guy who had hit me. I ended up paying for the cost of repairing the car myself (as it was less than what the loss of my remaining 2 years NCB would cost me at renewal) and had to chase them constantly for 2 years before I got my £1200 back. They also refused to pay any interest on my £1200.

Some will also give you drive other cars, some will even give you that on TPFT, some will give you windscreen cover on TPFT, some will give you a hire car for the duration of the repair, some will only give you one for 14 days. Some will claim to give you a hire car, then put (doesn't apply if you have an import) in the small print.

And in answer to the original question, the difference between TPFT and Fully Comp is a few hundred quid for me, with Fully Comp being the cheaper option. This is despite my terrible claims history.

As my car has a book value of a few hundred pounds there is no way that I would ever make a claim on the comprehensive part of the policy as the slightest accident would be a write off. If I were hit by another driver I would make a claim against him directly, probably through the small claims procedure. There seems to be a curious misapprehension, shared by many people, that if you are injured or wronged by an insured driver you are obliged to seek redress from their insurance company.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I can see why, given the rip off that is our inurance industry why more and more drivers (especially the new drivers or those on limited funds) are saying F*ck it and not bothering with insurance.

Am loathe to say it but should we have a maximum percentage profit that can be made on any one policy and or a government standard on how insurers should behave ?

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