The Lemon Fool

I'm finally rebelling against our current insurers, who are relying on my apathy to charge us a high premium that they reckon I'll continue to pay because I've been with them for an embarrassingly long time.

I will be really grateful for any suggestions for other insurers, the main requirement being a sympathetic/helpful customer service in the event of a claim. I'm thinking particularly of the possibility of my death/incapacity and my wife having to deal with a claim when I have always dealt with insurance during well over 50 years of marriage.

TIA

Jon

Two which seem highly regarded as far as customer service is concerned are Aviva and LV (Liverpool Victoria).

Both also tend to feature on Quidco from time to time if you want cahback, albeit with a wait of a few months.

I used to alternate between them picking up cashback as a new customer each time, but this year LV offered a reasonable premium so I stuck with them*

*I used the usual comparison sites too and checked Direct Line - another one with a good reputation - which doesn't appear on the sites, but none were significantly better, and I will pay a premium (pun intended) for a reputable company.

I read this week that, I think it was the RAC, are offering car insurance based on a charge per mile. This may work out cheaper for you if like me you drive less than 6000 miles a year. The figure quoted was 4p a mile plus some other fixed charges.

richlist wrote:I read this week that, I think it was the RAC, are offering car insurance based on a charge per mile. This may work out cheaper for you if like me you drive less than 6000 miles a year. The figure quoted was 4p a mile plus some other fixed charges.

The charges they quoted were bonkers!

£50 initial fee, £14 month to cover when you were not using it, plus “at least” (from the article I read) 4p per mile. So £218 before you have driven a mile and £458 if you did the max 6k miles.

Jonetc15 wrote:the main requirement being a sympathetic/helpful customer service in the event of a claim. I'm thinking particularly of the possibility of my death/incapacity and my wife having to deal with a claim when I have always dealt with insurance during well over 50 years of marriage.

TBH, the chances of your being in the middle of a claim when you pop your clogs are not high. You could certainly improve things by making sure you pay the extra £15 (or whatever) for legal insurance, which can speed up any claims if they happen. But you might like to consider some of these, which seem to have scored highly for customer satisfaction:

https://www.carbuyer.co.uk/news/141923/ ... -companies

In your position, I'd plug my requirements into a comparison website and see which of these came up.

BJ

Aviva for me, too.

It always amazes me that people are willing to spend many hours/days trying to save a few £'s on their annual car insurance whilst wasting much more in other areas of their lives.

richlist wrote:It always amazes me that people are willing to spend many hours/days trying to save a few £'s on their annual car insurance whilst wasting much more in other areas of their lives.

Last week my sister in law's car insurance was due to be automatically renewed for a sum of ~£600. After 15 mins on a comparison site, we reduced the renewal premium to £427, and surprisingly, this was with the same company. A well spent 15 mins I would say.
When you're living on a single pension, every penny saved is a bonus - even if it takes "many hours/days" to achieve.

dragnips wrote:Last week my sister in law's car insurance was due to be automatically renewed for a sum of ~£600. After 15 mins on a comparison site, we reduced the renewal premium to £427, and surprisingly, this was with the same company. A well spent 15 mins I would say.

We had a similar, or worse, scenario when my wife passed a big birthday milestone. Her premium nearly trebled overnight (despite maximum no claims and a clean licence), apparently because she had moved out of the company's target demographic zone. It took 15 minutes with a comparison website to reduce the premium from £675 to £240 or thereabouts. Also with a top-name insurer.

The offending company? Aviva. Just goes to show you can never tell.

BJ

richlist wrote:It always amazes me that people are willing to spend many hours/days trying to save a few £'s on their annual car insurance whilst wasting much more in other areas of their lives.

Agreed. But a check once every couple of years to see the annual renewal premium is in line with the market keeps me happy. Some companies do try it on with inertia (they call it "loyalty") when it comes to renewal premiums, but I think the main culprits realise that consumers have learnt not to just accept the offered renewal, so they'll find another way of making money And probably the requirement for renewals to include the previous year's premium will offer an indication of any price change (mostly price rise).

Well I received my renewal premium a couple of weeks ago and the premium had gone down. It didn't stop me from complaining, saying that I had done fewer miles over the last 12 months due to the lockdown and asking, could I have a refund ? They agreed, money was paid back onto my credit card today.

The OP has not said who is currently with and of course the actual premium will vary with his postcode so I doubt that others can help him very much.
First he should ask his current insurer to check that the premium quoted is the best they can do and then tell them he will move elsewhere. That may bring down the premium. He could also look at a comparison website but that does not always get me very far. For instance Admiral is often touted as very good but they are always about 50% more for me than my current insurer (Direct Line which is currently offering returns of premium depending on my mileage during lockdown)

Dod

Dod101 wrote: He could also look at a comparison website but that does not always get me very far.

According to the OP

Jonetc15 wrote:
... the main requirement being a sympathetic/helpful customer service in the event of a claim ...

Are comparison sites any good at this kind of qualitative measure? My limited experience seems to show it is price as the differentiating factor they focus on.

dealtn wrote:Are comparison sites any good at this kind of qualitative measure? My limited experience seems to show it is price as the differentiating factor they focus on.

As previously, look up the customer satisfaction listings and then see how the better ones shape up on the price comparison websites. All the while, keeping half an eye on things like excesses and the inclusion (or not) of courtesy cars and so forth.

It's been 20 years since I needed to make a claim, after a transit van made an unannounced U turn and ploughed into the side of me. The other driver's insurer was exemplary - they conceded their fault within an hour, and I had my courtesy car within two hours. But I gather that Direct Line have slipped a bit in the interim?

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:

dealtn wrote:Are comparison sites any good at this kind of qualitative measure? My limited experience seems to show it is price as the differentiating factor they focus on.

As previously, look up the customer satisfaction listings ...

Maybe I am just a little on the dense side today. You gave this link.

https://www.carbuyer.co.uk/news/141923/ ... -companies

So how do I (or the OP) access the survey to look at the ranks of customer satisfaction regarding claims etc. then?

Everything I click gives a Top Ten, or similar, comparing a number of factors, weighted and decided by the publisher.

If it's car insurance, Which top three March 2021

1. LV
2. NFU Mutual
3. Direct Line

I'm with NFU and have always found it easy to get through on the phone to someone whose English I could understand - following both a collision (not my fault) and changes of car and address. However, they do get some bad reviews on Trustnet so DYOR.

I'm with Direct Line and had to make a claim (not my fault) during the first lockdown. The claim was all handled by phone with email confirmations and went very smoothly. My car was picked up from my house for repair and a curtesy car provided.

Note that Direct Line don't appear in those comparison sites so you have to get a quote directly from them.

AF62 wrote:

richlist wrote:I read this week that, I think it was the RAC, are offering car insurance based on a charge per mile. This may work out cheaper for you if like me you drive less than 6000 miles a year. The figure quoted was 4p a mile plus some other fixed charges.

The charges they quoted were bonkers!

£50 initial fee, £14 month to cover when you were not using it, plus “at least” (from the article I read) 4p per mile. So £218 before you have driven a mile and £458 if you did the max 6k miles.

Obviously not their target market - we pay less than their minimum for all of our cars, and one is about half that. Our annual VED bill is more irritating, being higher than the insurance, especially considering one is only £20/year and we SORN 2 others for the winter

But back to the OP - sign up to the meerkat or the fat man, put your details in, and every year you can get a good idea of prices within 5 minutes.

Paul

DrFfybes wrote:But back to the OP - sign up to the meerkat or the fat man, put your details in, and every year you can get a good idea of prices within 5 minutes.

Yes, but price isn't his biggest concern though, as he explained.

dealtn wrote:Maybe I am just a little on the dense side today. You gave this link.

https://www.carbuyer.co.uk/news/141923/ ... -companies

So how do I (or the OP) access the survey to look at the ranks of customer satisfaction regarding claims etc. then?

Everything I click gives a Top Ten, or similar, comparing a number of factors, weighted and decided by the publisher.

Round and round we go. The annual Carbuyer/Autoexpress survey I mentioned is drawn from 50,000-odd responses - it's not as secretive or mysterious as you seem to be suggesting.

The seven charted categories are very specific - satisfaction with phone handling, ease of claims processing, speed to settle claims, and so forth. And in each category, for each of the top ten companies, you're getting a performance ranking out of the 54 companies surveyed. I'm struggling to see how this isn't enough to give the OP a few useful starting points.

You are, I think, an actuary, which is presumably why you're asking to see the detailed database of all 50,000 reader responses and 54 companies? I wouldn't know whether that information is available to the public, but I'd imagine not - probably they can make very large amounts of money by flogging the database to the insurance companies @ £10,000 a time. ) But for ordinary mortals I reckon the top ten listings with their 70 satisfaction consensuses would be good enough to help in assembling some sort of a shortlist. From there, it would be down to Fat Man and the Meerkats for the money angle.

BJ