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I have just changed a 2 ltr turbo diesel Rover for a similar Peugeot (worth about 4 times as much). When I rang my insurers they said I would be getting a small pro-rata refund which suprised me. Then I checked in the back of a motor mag and found that the Rover is Group 11 and the Peugeot is Group 5. Bearing in mind the relative performance, spares costs etc can anyone say why there should be this large discrepancy in the grouping?
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This has got to be a first!
I've never heard of a mid term refund.
I suspect this may have something to do with the proportion of Rovers vs that for Pugs in accidents or relative cost of repairs etc, or the theft/fire risks??
If you want a laugh, I changed my insurance from a pug 309SRi to a Lada Riva, and it actually went up by about 15%! Reason, because I went from a car over 10 years old to one just under. Bizarre. The chances of wanting to repair that heap after an accident were non existent!
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I think that this is part of what I was asking in my last thread. When I change my car I want to find one that is cheaper to insure than an equivalent one, but I dont want to have to trawl over loads of sites to do it and fill in forms. Somewhere there must be a record of what is cheaper to insure for an AVERAGE person. It would make choosing the car so much easier.
Bill
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Bill
unfortunately most people don't choose their car based on the insurance costs. The egg method I suggested is the closest thing I have come to getting quick quotes for a number of different cars. The premium is just as much about postcode as the vehicle itself.
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Thanks Jonathan, I'll give it a try.
Bill
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Sadly Jonathan is right, there is no easy way to do this.
Essentially it is complicated by three different things;
Firstly the car itself. The group is not simply a function of the power, cost or handling of a car. It is to do with the claims history of that car and the market it attracts. Hence the reason that of two similar cars, the slower can be more expensive to insure if that happens to be a GTi or similar, since it attracts a different driver/risk profile.
An easy example is the old world of MkII 1300 Cortinas. They were unrealistically expensive to insure becaue they were the car of choice of the "boy racer" market (a million years ago when I was young)where as the Hillman Hunter 1725cc (yes, I know) was cheaper.
Also, it is also to do with negotiation between the car manufacturer and the insurers. It is not unknown for a car manufacturer when greeted with a high group for his newly launched car, will offer cheaper repairs to an insurer in order to bring the group down. Or offer to recommend a particular insurer in return for a lower group rating from that insurer.
Secondly, the car group is only one thing, the others are age, sex, post code, driving experience, claims history, cover, driver restrictions, use and the rest.
Thirdly, and this is the most difficult to predict, it depends on the portfolio profile chosen by a particular insurer. It is quite usual for an insurer to ensure it is attractive within a particular market, and unattractive in others.
Using the car group as an example, it is fairly obvious that if an insurer likes low power cars they will be cheap for a 1.1l Escort and prohibitive for an M3. What is less expected, but equally true, is that an insurer aiming for the M3 market may well be extremely uneconomic within the Escort 1.1l market.
Now, that third point applies in exactly the same way to the age, value and type of car, it also applies to the driver details, cover, postcode, experience etc. etc.
In short, there is no way to predict.
All I can suggest is that you pick three cars, the most likely buy, a low powered but possible buy and a high powered but possible buy.
Pick the middle one and ring around or use the internet to get the best quote. Having found that, ask for quotes for the two boundary cars as well. Then you just take your best shot at guessing the rough premium for any car you look at.
Even then, when you find the one you buy, you'll have to ring around.
None of the above is consistent between different insurers.
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Then what on earth are insurance brokers for? I would have thought their job was to have their fingers on all the pulses all the time, and be able to advise their clients (ie you and me) on the best quotes for any combination of car, driver and post code.
Perhaps computers are not powerful enough yet to do this sort of number crunching, or perhaps insurance brokers have their fingers in some other pie we are not told about.
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>>Then what on earth are insurance brokers for.......
Exactly what you think. However, for them, or their computers, its a lot of work requoting for many different cars. And given that cost control is a function of all businesses, as soon as you ask for quotes for more than one or two cars they stop taking you seriously.
From personal experience the third quote is guessed.
And as for computers being powerful enough or not, that isn;t the issue. It is, at its fringes, a subjective business. And the best quotes are usually at the fringes.
If you decide you want to be insured with the Norwich Union, then it is fairly easy to get a range of quotes. However, a small difference in style of car, age or value of car can change the insurance market you are looking at.
DVD asked me a while ago about what brokers are for and the best use that can be made of them. I haven't forgotten DVD, it'll just be waiting until I have a quiet moment to put the thought into it.
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