Cut Your Car Insurance In 4 Steps Discussion Area

A question about : Cut Your Car Insurance In 4 Steps Discussion Area

This is the area for questions, feedback and discussion about the four step solution to cutting your car insurance costs. For the article containing this system click here.

If you are providing feedback. It would be very helpful to hear the results of each of the steps. As this is a new system all feedback is greatly appreciated.

My fingers are crossed that it saves you some money though.

Martin

Report your Car Insurance successes here

Best answers:

• Hi
  As my car insurance was due for renewal in 10 days, I decided to give this a try.
  Having followed the '4 Steps' I submitted my information via Confused.com. !This was rather time consuming but, as they reached a huge range of insurers, I thought the time would be well spent.
  I received an email about 30 minutes after submitting my details.
  Quotes ranged from Ј435.75 to Ј1,055.40!! !Quite a big difference I hear you say! !This insurance of for a Citroen Picasso Exclusive.
  Next, the post landed on the mat and to my surprise a renewal offer from my current insurer was enclosed.
  They quoted Ј302.65!!
  Don't think I will bother looking elsewhere!
  But thanks! ;D
• It's still worth the insure supermarket option aswell. Both Direct Line and Tesco are included there and they are particularly expensive at the moment.
• Have you researched cheaper car insurance for Northern Ireland? insuresupermarket will not even try once an NI postcode is put in!
• Hello All,
  Firstly, many thanks to those of you who voted for my charity, shipping unwanted bicycles to Africa - see www. re-cycle.org
  Confused indeed!!!
  I've bought an old Toyota Estate, after many years car free, and at last got round to getting it on the road.
  I'm want to insure for me + 4 others, using 9 years no claims
  Confused, good concept, came up with a painful Ј1303 to Ј1642 (car's worth Ј200!)
  I called Budget, freephone 0800 028 9044
  Anyone over 30;
  FORTIS - Fully Comp, protected No claim, Ј384
  NIG - 3rd party, no claims NOT protect, Ј242,
  4 named drivers, all over 30;
  NU - Fully Comp, No claim protected, Ј355
  AXA -3rd party, no claims NOT protected, Ј338
  Seems that Confused is VERY confused when multiple or any driver.
  ALSO WORTH NOTING
  Viz protected no claims, they said that anything over 5 years is a bonus, and when you make a claim it knocks 2 years off your no claims, after first going down to 5 years.
  i.e.
  Was 9 years
  Claim 1 => 3 years no claims bonus (5 - 2)
  Claim 2 => 1 years (3-2)
  Protecting it cost me Ј100, so i asked for a quote with 3 years no claims, to see what I would have to pay if I claimed, and it was about Ј100 more, so no point in protecting, in this instance.
  Anyway, please use a bike or bike + train wherever possible :~)
  Re-Cycle.org sells a kit to convert your bicycle into a stretch bike, for carrying shopping, kayaks, kids, parents, etc.
  See - www.xtracycle.com
  The FreeRadical transforms a regular bike into a go-anywhere cargo carrier. It performs on rugged terrain with payloads of up to 200 pounds = 100kg, while maintaining the friendly handling of a mountain bike. A FreeRadical-equipped bike can easily haul lumber, computers, kids, adults, kayaks, and ladders, loads previously considered too long, heavy, or bulky to be transported by bicycle. Adding a! FreeRadical to a bike is like adding a thumb to a four-fingered hand.
  I've regularly taken 2 adults and a child up and down hills (with clip in pedals).
  And I've had 2 adults surfing, hands free, round corners, with half an hour of practice!!!! (Disclaimer: don't try this at home kids!)
  The idea started with trying to make bikes more effective in Less Developed Countries (LDCs), for taking goods to market, fetching water etc. The company who make them have a charitable arm developing this still, which Re~Cycle works with.
  Cheers
  merlin matthews!!!
  CEO
  Re~Cycle ~ The Bicycle Charity
  Winner of the 1st “Upstart Award”, run by the New Statesman and Centrica, Ј15,000 and support ~ more in depth expert 3rd party validation of our simple and extremely effective work.!
  Secure Online donations available - please do!
  _ __o!!!!!!!!!
  _ _`\
• As an alternative, I'd like to recommend www.its4me.co.uk
  I was unhappy with the policy being offered by brokers I had used for the past 5 years and did a search for online quotes using google. Its4Me was one of the sites listed.
  Funnily enough they came up with a policy through my current insurer (Provident), same terms, same no claims, same everything, but Ј100 cheaper!
  You can make your payment online and print off your own insurance certificate etc although they also send you the paperwork through the post. (I also needed to send proof of no claims discount but that wasn't a problem).
  So... simply by changing broker, not insurer, I managed to save Ј100.
  Ursula
• As a bad risk category, I thought my example would be quite interesting.
  As Martin's article suggests, last year I bought a new car to take advantage of the 1 year's free insurance (the deal changed to 2 years shortly after, damn it!). It is now time to start shopping around for a good deal.
  I got a renewal notice through from my existing insurer for Ј1400! I am under 25, male, have 3 points for speeding and made a claim due to theft a couple of years ago.
  Firstly, I named my spouse as the main driver (she is over the all important 25 age limit) then I headed for the two search engines recommended.
  Best quote from confused.com came in at Ј550, insuresupermarket came in at Ј485 (but this quickly rose to over Ј600 when I filled in more detailed info - like my conviction(!) on the insurer's own site.
  I then went to the site of the insurer recommended by confused.com, managed to cut it slightly to Ј535 (as confused asked more questions, the quote was more realistic going into the last stage).
  Using the four step plan I have saved Ј865 on my renewal price, with no major changes in policy details. Just have to find a way of cutting my losses on my three year finance agreement! :-/
• Hi all,
  Using the plan I managed to cut my renewal premium on my BMW 320 diesel with Egg from Ј640.50 down to Ј442.99 with L&G, a saving of [glow=red,2,300]Ј197.51[/glow]. What's more, both include business use, which is really good as it precludes most insurers on the market from quoting for my business usually.
  L&G also let me protect my NCB for an extra Ј35.03, for which Egg wanted Ј98 extra.
  Interestingly, it was the Insure Supermarket that came up with the L&G; Confused.com couldn't beat my Egg renewal quote.
  Hope it helps, it certainly did the trick for me ;D
  Mark
• Hi martin
  My husband's car insurance was up for renewal and told him that he just HAD to go on this site and read your advice. He did and went to confused.com, he received a range of quotes from Ј243.27 to Ј358.20 for a Rover 414sli 4 dr m-reg car with 6 yrs ncb (protected).
  It took a bit of time filling out all the information with confused.com but it was worth it especially when he received his renewal form through and they were quoting Ј345.36 !!!!
  We have just changed over to AXA through confused.com and have now saved Ј102.09 although the Norwich Union rep wasnt too pleased when he told her that he had found a much better quote with the same cover/benefits for sooo much less ;D
  Thanks martin for the very good advice, keep up the good work as we continue to save money with your help.
• I received my renewal for motor insurance from Direct Line - Ј395.85.
  "Not bad" I thought but I took the maestro's advice and visited directline.com to see if I could better than by starting up a new policy. I entered exactly the same info as held by Direct Line.
  Ј283.50 on the website !!!
  I called them up for an explanation about this but they "couldn't understand the difference".
  It's scandalous that they are ripping off loyal customers and encouraging new customers by offering cheaper policies.
  direct Line is still the cheapest for my profile but remember to renew your policy every year !!!
• For information that may be of particular interest to "Senior Citizens" (mature in age drivers) There is an excellent article in the September issue of Which magazine, that provides a table showing which Insurers will not quote at "age" whatever, say 70 plus.
  It is very time consuming getting a quote on or offline, when the routine requires all the full prelim info - address, car &cc - but age comes much later - and the reply is..."sorry unable to quote" : you may find that the analysis shown would be of interest to your subscribers.
• I succeeded on Confused on my second attempt: they took the site down half way through my first attempt, and I was getting very frustrated at the password point on my second attempt - shame I can't count the no. of letters in my password.
  But, a hint if you have not been terribly conscientious in keeping a detailed list of all your claims for the last five years. I phoned my current insurer and asked for the details, said I needed them for a form at work (which is true). Initially they only went back 3 years, and they couldn't give me the costs involved in all cases, and I don't think they EVER told me what repairs cost at the time. So I had to make these up - and put the min. of Ј100 for the ones where my insurer recovered all costs, which annoyed me a bit.
  I await the results with baited breath - not that I've had my renewal yet. And bear in mind cheapest is not necessarily best. If Direct Line come within a whisker of the cheapest, I'm staying put because I have been satisfied with the service they offer.
• My spouse is now, in fact, the main driver. I am at work while she is at home with the car.
  Plus, I am only bad risk because that is the category my details place me (not much I can do about age, having items stolen from me, and I don't particularly think being caught doing 80 on the motorway makes me a bad driver). I have never had an accident in 5 years on the road, and now when driving normally have my baby on board, so I'm more likely to be driving with caution (trying desperately to avoid the other maniacs out there).
  Unfortunately, insurers cannot go into too much detail to quote, and so the info I provide makes me look bad. I would consider myself to be a much better risk than someone who has to ask their insurer for all the details of all the crashes they've had because it's too many to remember!
  I understand and grudgingly accept this paradox, being an underwriter in profession!
• If you think you are a better driver than the insurers do then why not take (and presumably pass) an advanced driving test? It can often make enough of a difference to your premium to cover your outlay.
• I have done, and passed my pass plus. Makes a small difference but can't stop you from being stereotyped though.
• I used the 2 websites you suggested using for cheaper car insurance.
  www.insuresupermarket.com only came back with one result but is was a good bit cheaper
  than what we were being quoted from the existing provider.
  www.confused.com took longer to fill in but not too bad and you have to wait for them
  to email you back But they returned loads of results and most of them cheaper.
  We took up one of their suggestions that saved us over Ј100 and we got windscreen
  cover with it which we were not getting before.
  Thanks
• Hi there,
  I tried both the search sites & didn't think that much of them - i already had a pretty low renewal notice from Tesco of Ј213.15 fully comp - confused.com came out at Ј217.75 and insuresupermarket reckoned they could get Ј199 but would'nt name the insurer unless i coughed up some cash for the privelege (can't blame them i suppose!).
  In the end i resubmitted my info to tesco.com via their website and they came in Ј10 cheaper - so the system does work!!! May phone them tomorrow for a haggle!
  ;D Kev the Consumer Monkey
• sorry please can you explain what you mean by 'until i coughed up the dough'?
  What exactly did it say?