Car Insurance Renewals

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mo3art

Registered User
Messages
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Hi all,

I just wanted to let you know about our situation as regards insurance renewal.

Without naming and shaming!

We have had a policy with a large company for the past 3 years, 1 of us has a full license(male) and one a provisional(female). Last year through shopping around, we managed to negotiate our policy down to €800 from €1K. This year when we received our renewal quote, it was for €1K, so off down to the local branch where we were informed that it was now policy for this company to try and recoup the losses incurred at discount stage the previous year, and the largest discount we could possibly be offered was 20%, which would match last years premium.

Needless to say, we went elsewhere and managed to save 40% on our renewal quote this year with another large firm (€600) for the pair of us. But I find it interesting that insurers are trying to recoup losses from discounts. One to be aware of anyway when renewing your policy
 
mo3art said:
But I find it interesting that insurers are trying to recoup losses from discounts. One to be aware of anyway when renewing your policy
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Believe me, I have no great love for insurance companies, and pay a hefty premium myself every year to date (based on length of time driving etc. NOT beacause of any claims I've made.

But if the insurance company is making a loss when offering you a discount in the first year, why is it not unreasonable to expect that they should try and recoup these 'losses' at some stage?

There are plenty of examples of this type of practice in the industry, e.g. first year life/mortgage policies are often heavily discounted (if arranged through brokers).

Is there any evidence that the company who offered you a 40% discount this year, not try and recoup that cost at a later date?
 
If you can get the same insurance cheaper, then they're not offering you a discount, they're merely meeting another company's price to keep the business. There's nothing to tie you to your car insurer for more than a year, so you're going to move to whoever offers the best quote. I don't believe the reason given is valid. I also don't believe that an insurance company is going to give you a large enough discount that they take a loss purely from that.

It's not valid to compare car insurance to mortgage rates. It costs a significant sum to switch mortgage.
 
Seagull said:
It's not valid to compare car insurance to mortgage rates. It costs a significant sum to switch mortgage.
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I wasn't comparing car insurance to mortgages, I was comparing car insurance to mortgage protection.
 
Exactly my point Seagull. What baffles me is that people will pay the premium at the higher rate upfront. As soon as we went into the branch office, they instantly offered us a 20% discount without us mentioning that we had shopped around.

It really does make you wonder about these renewal notices............

Lesson learned, we won't take this for granted next year either.
 
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