Insurance RANT

[Most Easterly Pandas]

Companies should not be allowed to decimalisation due to area or wealth but they do this all the time.

Like it or not but it's one of the basic principles of how insurance works - and it has been since insurance begun. You all pay into a pot, upon calling on it your paid out. If a load of claims arise and a shed load is paid out, then that shed load needs to be repaid in following premiums (renewals) so prices increase.

It's got nothing to do with wealth, or crime rate even for that matter. Claims are not all linked to crime

 

[Ganger]

Everybody takes about crime hot spots but it doesn't excuse companies charging thousands upon thousands of pounds for a 20 year driver to drive around in a 1.1 corsa.

e.g Some guy living on the same street who owns a escort cosworth pays only £600 a year while a lad of 20 who owns a 1.1 corsa is paying £2500. This has nothing to do with crime, its a outright ripp off that tries to stop young people form driving and that why I say the goverment should get involve to stamp this out.

 

[volxstu]

Whilst i think some insurance should be lower than it is now my main gripe is the fact that they dont investigate claims properly and just call 50/50 all the time.

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

Everybody takes about crime hot spots but it doesn't excuse companies charging thousands upon thousands of pounds for a 20 year driver to drive around in a 1.1 corsa.

e.g Some guy living on the same street who owns a escort cosworth pays only £600 a year while a lad of 20 who owns a 1.1 corsa is paying £2500. This has nothing to do with crime, its a outright ripp off that tries to stop young people form driving and that why I say the goverment should get involve to stamp this out.

No, it seems to be mainly you. Most talk about areas which incur high numbers of claims, nothing much about crime rate though. We're not still in the 80's & 90's.

So let put this into perspective.

Some guy with 5-9 years NCD pays £600 to insure a Cosworth. probably has unto 75-80% NCD on that premium depending upon the company.

So without that NCD he'd be paying up to £2400

Youngster with no driving experience and in an age group who is likely to smash their car up, who has no NCD is paying £2500.

Bloody good deal at only £100 more imo.

Whilst i think some insurance should be lower than it is now my main gripe is the fact that they dont investigate claims properly and just call 50/50 all the time.

How do you know they don't?

Then again all insurance companies are different, and it comes down to getting what you pay for.

A lot of the time though accidents are open shut cases, and half the time there is nothing to investigate as no independent witnesses etc.

 

[volxstu]

I know they dont by the amount of people i see where some idiot who is blatantly in the wrong manages to wrangle a 50/50 claim. Its a blatant and rife scam so no insurances have to pay out.

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

I know they dont by the amount of people i see where some idiot who is blatantly in the wrong manages to wrangle a 50/50 claim. Its a blatant and rife scam so no insurances have to pay out.

As I've said everything has to be taken on a case by case basis.

If there is no evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt who is at fault then it's either be 50/50 or knock for knock.

How is this not right or unfair?

I've yet to know someone having a case settled 50/50 when it can be proven they're not at fault, such as being rear ended etc.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

The biggest problem at the moment is car insurance is a loss making business, companies are paying out more in claims than they gain from premiums.

If I drive into the back of your car, do £2,000 of damage you claim for damage to your car from me, straight away you've claimed 4 times what I pay in my annual premium. I claim for damage to my car maybe another £2k or maybe they cut their losses and right my car off pay me £3k to buy another car.... Insurance comapany is now £5k out of pocket and ive only ever paid them £500.. Then you claim for that sore neck you have you have to have a private doctor do a medical assessment another £300 - 400 maybe you need a course of physio (£2000) and some medical imaging another £500 per MRI scan. You then want your payment for personal injury which will cure you from the traumatic experience which usually starts off at £1500 but could be up to £5000 depending on the extent of the injury usually judged by the cost of damage to the car. So you get your cheque for £2,500 and your car fixed and your neck has stopped hurting and all is well except the no win no fee solicitor has put their bill into my insurance company for the work they've done making all other cost seem like pennies, this can easily be £10,000 plus for the most simple of cases, though I once heard of a £1700 whiplash claim costing £400,000 in solicitors fees

Anyway a simple bump and a couple of damaged cars has cost my insurance company £30,000 I've only paid them £500 and the following month my renewal comes through so I go with a different insurance company as suggested by a russian meerkat. All in all my insurance company is £29,500 out of pocket with no hope of recouping those losses from me

This is a situation that repeats its self literally hundreds of times every day so the insurance co's bump up the costs for the inexperienced drivers most likely to have an accident but even then they still fail to make money

So it's hard to build a case for insurance companies lowering insurance costs for younger drivers

 

[volxstu]

As I've said everything has to be taken on a case by case basis.

If there is no evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt who is at fault then it's either be 50/50 or knock for knock.

How is this not right or unfair?

I've yet to know someone having a case settled 50/50 when it can be proven they're not at fault, such as being rear ended etc.

A lot of the onus is on the drivers. When people **** up they dont just hold their hand up and say "Sorry that was my fault". They argue the toss and the insurance companies are happy to call 50/50 because they cant prove "beyond reasonable doubt" as they are much less likely to have to pay out.

 

[dombooth]

Whilst i think some insurance should be lower than it is now my main gripe is the fact that they dont investigate claims properly and just call 50/50 all the time.

Or the ones that say it's the young drivers fault when it isn't. :bang:

Dom

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

Or the ones that say it's the young drivers fault when it isn't. :bang:

Dom

I've been there and got the T-shirt unfortunatly. Managed to prove otherise though luckily.

 

[dombooth]

I've been there and got the T-shirt unfortunatly. Managed to prove otherise though luckily.

Same here.

No witnesses that stopped for me though so nothing I could do about it.

And the guys son was a copper so knew exactly how to work his statement. :bang:

Dom

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

Same here.

No witnesses that stopped for me though so nothing I could do about it.

And the guys son was a copper so knew exactly how to work his statement. :bang:

Dom

Partly the reason I've now got T-eye in my cars.

 

[dombooth]

Partly the reason I've now got T-eye in my cars.

I've got my phone running as one.

Dom

 

[ChrisUK]

My suggestion would to limit the engine size for young drivers 17 to 21 but in turn lower the cost of insurance to well under £600 for young drivers.

I see that working wonders seen as though most youthfull idiots manage to cause a trail of destruction in the worlds most underpowered cars I really don't see limiting them to 1.0/1.2 engines would lower the risk at all?...

 

[ChrisUK]

The biggest problem at the moment is car insurance is a loss making business, companies are paying out more in claims than they gain from premiums.

Trust me they make plenty of profit....

They are in the ideal business model, people are legally obliged to purchase insurance. Costs go up all they have to do is put prices up.

Your are right in the fact the minority of people cost the companies a small fortune but what you got to think about is the people who have paid for insurance year after year without a single claim....

 

[ChrisUK]

its a outright ripp off that tries to stop young people form driving and that why I say the goverment should get involve to stamp this out.

And why should the government get involved? It's not anyones legal 'right' to be able to afford to drive it's a priviledge. If you can't afford it don't do it or work harder or smarter so you can afford it.

 

[Ffoxy]

Actually the Government should do one... stop getting involved where we dont want them involved.

Market forces work... Car Insurance stats dont favour some people in some communities... and if there was no miney in it for Insurers do you really think there would be so many of them touting for business?

 

[hmmmm]

OP, did you add your parents to the insurance?

Even as a secondary driver it makes a HUGE difference in price

For me, then premium is no more than £100 different between the 1.2, 1.4 and 1.4 16V GP

 

[sludgeguts]

The biggest problem at the moment is car insurance is a loss making business, companies are paying out more in claims than they gain from premiums.

If this is the case (which it isn't - how could it be?) then Ins cos have only got themselves to blame.

I got out of a pricey 50/50 by showing the video from my dashcam.
Having a dashcam on my bus has saved my job many a time, especially as thousands of idiot drivers and pedestrians think they know how to drive.

Dash cams should be compulsory on ALL vehicles, either factory or retro fit - definitely should be a law forcing ALL drivers to have them.
Possibly even the double lens ones?

That way, ALL accidents can be sorted without filling in millions of forms, drawing diagrams etc.Speeds can easily be calculated, possibly even working out if whiplash could be sustained (and even seeing just how many were in the car in front - so preventing some of the crash for cash scams).

No cam should mean automatic void insurance.
No cam should be MOT fail & not allowed to take the car out of the garage.
If police pull a car without a cam - it gets lifted & stored.

Edit. Anyone know if the olympic bus hitting the cyclist was captured on cam?
As a cyclist, I lost count of the number of morons who overtook me only to turn left immediately in front of me, forcing me to brake hard (instead of just hanging back for a second or so). As a bus driver, i have lost count of the number of idiot cyclists who use the 12" between me and the kerb to get in front - despite my signalling to turn.
Many of the newer buses have 2 internal cams (back/front as well as 4 external - back, front, sides)

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Trust me they make plenty of profit....

They are in the ideal business model, people are legally obliged to purchase insurance. Costs go up all they have to do is put prices up.

If this is the case (which it isn't - how could it be?) then Ins cos have only got themselves to blame.

Just to defend my claim of Car insurance companies loosing money, this has been stated in many TV documentaries, insurance companies can prop up these losses to some extent with other sides of the business, investments and other insurance products.

this quote from the Independent says it all

Simon Douglas, the director of insurance at the AA, explains that price hikes are inevitable when companies are losing money. "By 2009 insurers were paying out £123 in claims for every £100 taken in premiums. As some insurers began to push up rates in response, people bought instead from those insurers that had not increased prices, causing them to write even higher volumes of loss-making business," he says. "This trend was fuelled by the growth of price-comparison sites, where typically half of customers buy the cheapest product they can get."

http://www.independent.co.uk/money/...-and-young-drivers-pay-the-price-2356441.html

Insurance companies effectively gamble on how much they will have to pay out if at the end of the year what they pay out is more than what they've taken in premiums the gamble has gone bad like any other form of gambling

Insurance Co's respond which huge price hikes which is what they did last year. with the 17-25yo age group suffering the most