Motor Car Insurance €500 dearer with 3-day difference in renewal date!?

MTW

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I am posting this as I am in shock (putting it mildly) and wondering if anyone has insight or experienced anything similar.

My car insurance is due for renewal on the 29th October (with Aviva). The renewal quote is ca. €880. I tried a 'dummy' quote online with Aviva (to see if new customer policy would be cheaper) and by mistake I put in a renewal date of 1st November and got a quote of ca. €370.

I rang Aviva today to see if they could do any better with my quote. I mentioned I had done an online quote and there was a huge difference, but expected this was some sort of glitch.

The Agent said, No, this was probably correct, as a weighting is applied based on the renewal date. So if more claims are processed in October this would drive up the renewal cost!!

I cannot believe this is a) possible b) allowed c) not spotted already. Has anyone ever come across this? I feel like I need to complain to someone but not sure where to start.

Also, if I let my insurance lapse for 3 days and effectively take out a new policy - can anyone think of any risks (apart from something happening to my car)? The agent said if I did this it would not affect my No Claim Bonus but I'd be slightly nervous. She said there was no way I could extend my existing policy to cover the 3 days.
 
Just dont drive your car for three days (won't be hard at the minute :( )

You have me intrigued, I must check this out myself.
 
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It sounds like a glitch in their algorithm. But if I were you I wouldn't point it out to them until after you have bought the cheap policy. The agent on the phone is likely to be someone on minimum wage who doesn't know and doesn't care.
 
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Yes - got an online quote for the correct renewal date and it's almost identical to my real quote. If I don't change anything else - just the date - it drops by €500. I tried it on other insurance sites (AA, Axa) but the date doesn't matter for them - the quotes are closer to my original and stay the same.

I've gone ahead and bought the new policy but it will be interesting to see what happens. The agent who spoke to me (who seemed to be in Galway alright) said if I bought the new policy someone would likely ring to ask about the gap in insurance.
 
[broken link removed] Don't drive an Audi and have no affiliation with Aviva but I used this promo code a few weeks back to get 10% off, it's worth a try worked for me
 
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