I Have just received my renewal for my Audi A6 2.5tdi. I am in a low risk profession, have never made a claim in umpteen years of motoring and apart from getting caught by a speed camera three years ago have led a blameless life. My reward for this is that my renewal premium has increased from £405.33 last year to £502.23 this year. Last year they tried it on as well and after a call from me they gave me a "loyalty bonus" of £50 which brought the premium in line with other quotes. After ten minutes ringing around I had quotes of £330.75 (Direct Line), £305.20 (Elephant) and £292.95 (Tesco) - all on a like for like basis with protected NCB and legal assistance. I then reverted to my current provider and once again got £50 off, which only made then 50% more expensive than the others. So now we know why they are called "More Than", presumably because they are more than everybody else. This practice is self defeating as it seems their approach is to increase prices the longer you stay with them, as a way of increasing their margins. However this means that otherwise indifferent customers such as myself will go elsewhere, increasing "churn rates" and the costs of customer acquisition. How much smarter it would be to keep me as a solid, reliable customer and then add customers as well. However it seems that financial services in general seem to offer better deals to non-customers rather than current customers, hence we are all conditioned to constant price checking of mortgages, insurance etc and becoming more cynical and price driven in the process. Certainly I will continue to price check premiums regularly. Incidentally I will go for Elephant as they offer 90 days continental cover, useful for holidays and when I visit my brother who lives in Germany.
MGs
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Definitely worth shopping around, but be careful to specify all the options your car has - for example, elephant will cover a MINI Cooper but won't take into account any options you have on it, and won't pay out for them in the event of a claim - and seeing as £2-3k of options on a MINI is the minimum, it can be a big hit.
The other thing to watch for is the silly prices "cheap" insurers charge for changes - I was absolutely robbed by Hastings Direct to change address, when I moved to a lower risk area.
For that reason, I would never use Hastings Direct again.
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Lee
MINI adventure in progress
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I had a very similar experience to you. My renewal was due in early August but in July I changed vehicles. Like you I was a customer of many years standing, enjoying max NCB, no convictions etc etc. In fact this was one of 2 vehicles I had insured. I was charged an Admin fee of £20 to change, but before agreeing to this enquired what the premium for the new vehicle would be and was quoted £247. On renewal 3 weeks later they quoted £309.
A phone call established they were not prepared to price match.
A quick ring round secured an identical cover policy (not the cheapest) from Cornhill Direct of £218. The car, an Audi A2 TDI Sport.
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100 existing customers
100 new customers
All currently paying £100
50 existing customers stay with you at £100 just because
30 renew at £90 because they bothered to ask for a requote
20 go, some would have gone anyway, sone didn't bother to ask for a requote.
0 take a policy at £100
100 new customers take policies at £90
Therefore;
A £10 reduction in premium gained you £9,000 in revenue 100 customers
A £10 reduction in renewal premiums gained you £2,700 in revenue & 30 customers
A blanket £90 reduction for all would have achieved the same number of customers but £5,000 less revenue. And of the 20 who left, you would have probably only retained 10 or so because the other 10 left for other reasons - don't like the service, change of car, sold car, died, etc. etc.
Overly simplistic, I know, but you can see why they reckon they're getting a better return for their effort in new customers.
In addition, it is far easier to keep your risk profile in balance selectively acquiring new customers than it is trying to manipulate renewals - mostly because some of the renewals will leave anyway and some will stay anyway and you don't know which is which.
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You have to so careful with making sure that what you think is like for like really is when comparing cheaper policies with more expensive.
My premium from a traditional (ie not online only insurer)seemed expensive this year so I rang around. Because my cynical sensors were out, I asked about the factory fitted touch screen satellite navigation system in my car (a replacement if it were smashed or broken by a thief, or had the boot mounted CD drive nicked, would be about £2500+ from a dealer).
I had made the assumption that because it was factory fit it would be covered in full, in the same way as a driver's seat would be for example. My existing insurer confirmed that to be the case. However, the cheaper online only type insurers to a man said they viewed it as "audio equipment" and therefore would cover only £250-£500 worth. At least, those that understood the question did. The only one who made the effort to check with their claims department said they would in fact cover the full cost but it would be an extra premium. As that brought the cost virtually back to my original quote I've stuck with them, having double checked, been reassured and had the line in the policy pointed out to me that I would be covered in those admittedly unlikely but feasible circumstances.
Ok, so not everyone has satnav, but it does make you think about different definitions of "comprehensive".
I'm not really saying anything other than "check the small print" here, am I? I'll shut up now!
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So now we know why they are called "More Than", presumably because they are more than everybody else
I renewed with them recently as they were the cheapest for me - online that is, the renewal didn't have the 'online discount'.
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An insurance company will deicde on the risk profile they will adopt. They will then gear their premiums and reinsurance to cover a risk profile as appropriate.
Using made up figures, they may decide that they would like to insure 30 - 39 year old, group 5 - 10 cars, in areas rated 2 - 5, with no accidents.
Equally they could decide 19 year olds with Ferraris in central London.
Using the expected risk profile they can then work out their likely costs (admin, processing & claims) and with their reinsurance costs can then work out their premiums.
They will then be economic for that group. However, outside that group they will be typically uneconomic. It could be that they have great premiums for the high risk cars and awful for the lower risk cars or vice versa.
Hence anytime you change a material factor on your insurance you may enter or leave a particular insurer's target risk.
In addition they may rebalance their risk portfolio during the year. Too many claims or too many customers in one particular area and they may decide to increase their premiums. Or correspondingly lower them.
Hence you should always check at renewal.
And thus the reason why it is impossible to say, beyond general principles, that an insurer who is reasonable for one will be reasonable for another.
The original job of a broker was to understand that and place a risk appropriately, always looking for discrepancies.
e.g. company a may rate a particular car as one group lower, an area as one higher, a claim as 5% less etc. etc. and it is the particular combination of those factors that would lead them to a particular insurer.
Added to that is the way that people are constantly misled by marketing. If I tell everybody that I will give you 90% discount for Max NCD, thousands of people rush there without thinking of the fact that whilst the discount is high, the gross premium is astronomic. Always pay attention to the Ts&Cs and the bottom line premium - discounts are not relevant, only the final premium is.
Anyway, that's a huge subject, and I've got a meeting to go to.....
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Mrs DE & I have been customers of Direct Line for around 7 years. Twice a year (2 cars!) we do the rounds, spend ages on the phone/internet and every time, bar one, D L came out best.
On that one occasion I asked them to match A N Other and they did.
However, now that continental motoring will be taking up some of my time we'll need to check out "Green Card" costs. These seem to vary enormously between insurers ranging from free for a couple of weeks to a tenner for a day trip.
D L is free for a day trip. Cost Mrs DE £12 for our last 5 day trip.
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