Car Insurance

Here's one for everyone who (like me) assumes that Linea Directa always offers great value.

In September the OH bought a new car.  We had a quote from Linea Directa, who insure my car, and it was more than 25% higher than a neighbour who was buying the identical car.  Got similar quote from their company for the OH car, so obviously we went with it - only difference in terms was a slightly higher excess but still the difference in excess was less than the difference in premium, so a bit of a no-brainer.

The real crunch came when my renewal note came last week - Linea Directa wanted €200 more for my five-year old car, including full no claims, than the OH had for his brand new fancy job (worth three times as much) from the new insurer.  Phoned new company and got quote for less than half the LD price.  Accepted quote, phoned LD to cancel.  They of course wanted to know why, so I told them.  Very pushy customer service advisor offered to 'see what they could do' about improving the amount.  Said I thought it a bit unlikely that she could get it down by more than 50% to which the response was that as a valued customer they would be willing to lose money on me to keep my business!!   I told her I was not interested in haggling after the event, that if I really was a valued customer they should not be sending out renewal notes for ridiculous amounts on the assumption that people tend not to bother getting competitive quotes every year.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

New Broker is AJB Consultants, based in Javea but we do it all by phone.  You can find them at www.ajbinsurance.com

Nobody? OK, I got a quote from Abbeygate (recommended elsewhere - was it by Morerosado?) and also AJB, who came in cheapest, at €477. (Abbeygate €556). I paid €667 with Linea Directa last year (who I've been with for 4 or 5 years), so I rang them and told them.

Surprise surprise, LD have agreed to renew my policy, "as a valued customer", for €475!! Only stipulation is raising my excess by €90 (not a hard choice in order to save €200), and paying by debit card instead of direct debit. That bit is just a tad worrying - apparently it's because DD payments don't clear into their account for 45 days, whereas debit card payments are immediate. Question: why is that so important to them? Do they have cash flow problems?? And another question: how come the bank gets to play with my money for 45 days?

Thanks to jane b for waking me up, by the way! I'm off out to blow 200 notes on something that will give me far more enjoyment than car insurance ever has done.

Bad past experience with Mapfre on building insurance, will never touch them again. Plus, a neighbour of mine was recently involved in a car accident, the other driver admittde liability. Both my neighbour and the other driver are insured with Mapfre. No courtesy car for my neighbour, and so far 6 weeks, still waiting to get his car back from the body shop (relatively minor front end damage). Pretty poor for the country's biggest insurer, I think.

Of course, you never know how good or bad any insurer is until the worst happens. Fortunately, touch wood, I've never had to put Linea Directa to the test.

I need some help on car insurance please.

As some of you may know, we had our car stolen a month ago, so we are having an old car from my Dad, driving it to Spain and then scrapping it and buying a Spanish one. So, I have been ringing around the car insurers to get quotes and most insurances are for a minimum of 12 months, we only want 1 month. I was directed to daily insurance companies and getting quotes from them is coming in at £170 for 28 days for me & hubby, both been driving over 20 years, 50's age bracket and car is worth about £250 (and £100 of that is probably for the stereo)

So, is there anyone involved in insurance that may be able to give me some pointers where to try next to see if I can lower the premium. We both need to be insured to share the driving and the £170 is cheaper than a years insurance (unfortunately, the theft of our car is not helping with our quotes)

An with all this, it only gives us 3rd party cover whilst driving through Spain.

HELP!!!!!

Hi Jacqui

So sorry you are having such a hard time over this.  What about keeping the car for longer than a month and thus making use of a few more months of the insurance (and road fund tax/MOT assuming they have some time to run) before you have to buy a new one?  I have a feeling that there might be costs associated with scrapping cars here, too. .. Perhaps Maria can advise on this.

Another option is to advertise in a local Spanish paper here to see if anyone is returning to the UK with a car that they would like to sell.

Good luck.

Don't most insurers offer an option to pay monthly on an annual premium? Then, if you cancel the policy before the year is up, can you not just cancel the payments too? Or, get a refund on the balance of your policy when you cancel? You may have to pay 3 months or so of an annual policy, but it might work out cheaper?

I think most fully comp. policies only give you third party cover when abroad anyway. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

To officially scrap a UK registered car, you will surely have to notify DVLA? Don't know how that works, but don't you need a certificate or something from the scrap yard? If so, will it be possible to do this from Spain? Sorry, don't know the answers myself!

We do have to notify DVLA when we scrap it, there's a box to tick. If we go to a scrap dealer or vehicle dismantler, we will need a certificate of destruction. We are going to ask for advice from where we buy our new car from.

I think our insurers are being unhelpful because of our recent claim, because I have now found one where we would get refund of a proportion of premium, if we cancel before 30 days we get 80% back, upto 60 days and we get 70% refund. The problem I was having was I was being too honest, they won't insure us if we are going one way to Spain, if we work on the basis we will be returning, we can get cover.

Having spent several hours on this today I think I have found the right solution.