Insurance online quirk

tenchi-fan

Quinn direct posted me out a letter saying they were pleased to offer me my renewal quote for car insurance. I went online to type in all the same details they have for my policy and found it was several hundred cheaper. No surprise there, it's well known Quinn Direct are cheaper online!

Changing fields like the number of penalty points, licence type, number of years licence held, make and model of car all change the cost of the premium - no surprise there! But these aren't things you can just lie about otherwise your insurance would not be valid.

However, here's something that surprised me.

I typed in the "value of car" as Eur3000. I only went for 3rd party cover, but I figured the car probably isn't even worth Eur3000 so I clicked amend policy and changed the value to Eur2000... it actually added somewhere between Eur100 and Eur200 to the cost of the insurance! So just a warning to Quinn Direct policy holders who drive a heap of junk but are thinking about undervaluing the car to get cheaper insurance, it can actually put the cost of your insurance up while providing less cover!

(I assume the reason for this is cars worth less are likely to be poorly maintained and therefore a greater risk. Also, many younger people can only afford cheaper cars, but they also have more accidents. Therefore by having a lower value car you are in the same category as them)

Strokesfan

That's good information to know because i'm with them at the moment!

Del2005

It's not just Quinn they all do it. Got caught out with this several years ago and have over valued cars since them. They will only pay out the market value anyway.

Supercell

Del2005 wrote: »

It's not just Quinn they all do it. Got caught out with this several years ago and have over valued cars since them. They will only pay out the market value anyway.

That bugs the hell out of me.
They will only bloody pay out "market value" anyway so why bother to ask for a valuation when they are going to completely ignore it should they have to pay out?
Seems to me to be a sly way of adding on to the premium.
Try as I might, I can't see any vindication for this, any here know the real reason they ask us to value our cars?

steveland?

Put in 2000 euro and then try 2001 euro.

It's stupid... The value of the car should be determined by the model, year, engine capacity etc... Same way it is for VRT. They also use the numerical value of your age, not your actual age. I got a quote from Quinn two days before my 21st birthday, then checked what it'd be in two days time when I was 21 and it was about 150 euro cheaper... If you're anywhere near your birthday you should wait to get a new car or switch till you actually go past that birthday.

I went with Axa in the end because they're more sensible about it... A euro difference in the value and two days difference in my age didn't make a difference, the girl on the phone was able to use her common sense to give me a good quote (plus was about 1000 times more friendly that the person I spoke to on the phone in Quinn).

Plus Axa was only about 50 euro more expensive for the year than Quinn were, they put my parents on as named drivers for free and I don't have to lose my NCB if the car's stolen.

Moral of the story: shop around!

rebel.ranter

It's like everything now though, you get what you pay for. Take Ryanair, has a horrible reputation in the media regarding customer service. Yet their flights are cheap. If they are cheap something has to give. Once you know that going into the contract then everything should be OK. I fly with Ryanair every week, I play by their rules & never once had a problem.
Similarly with Quinn, you play by their rules, understand what the policy does & doesn't cover & you should work from that base.
Not all policies are the same so cheap isn't always best. There was an article in the Money & Jobs section of the Examiner on Friday last where this very subject came up. There can be many differences in insurance policies besides price, e.g. the excess, what's covered wrt contents, addons like break down assisit, cust care standards, claim procedures & more.

Similar savings can be made on most things, e.g buying a product on-line like a TV. You can save money getting it on-line, that's fine until something goes wrong with it. If you had bought it in a shop it would, in theory be far easier to get a resolution. Depends what's important to you.