Please help: Temporarily insuring a second car in Ireland...

Bug_Bee_01

I have a bit of an annoying situation and I'm struggling to find any good options online or via my insurance provider - hoping someone here can help 🤞🏻

I bought a car (car 1) and it had a major fault within 6 weeks - it's being repaired under warranty but my trust in the vehicle is gone and I've decided to replace it. It's a good car, I was just unlucky and it will be repaired fully before I sell it; not scamming anyone!

I bought a new car (car 2) and it will be delivered before I've managed to sell car 1; as car 1 is going to the garage for a big repair and won't be ready until car 2 is here. Then I obviously need to get it valeted, advertise it etc.

There will be a likely overlap of around 1 month in which I own both cars. I don't want to get caught in a year-long insurance policy for obvious reasons, and I can't find any provider offering temporary insurance in Ireland. I will need it insured for longer than the 14 day cooling off period on a new policy.

I obviously want car 1 to remain insured until I sell it, especially so that interested parties can test drive it.

Has anyone found themselves in this position before, and if so, what did you do? Please help 😅

JVince

You will probably need to take out a new independent policy. Then once the car is sold you can cancel the policy and they will refund the difference.

Maybe pay in installments so that you can cancel payment once the policy is cancelled rather than wait for a refund.

beachhead

You will not find temporary motor insurance in Ireland that you need.JVince told you to get insurance on car 1 and pay by installments then cancel the policy when the car is sold.Insuring 2 cars as a household would cost a lot more and needing 2 separate names to lower the quote

coylemj

You will probably need to take out a new independent policy. Then once the car is sold you can cancel the policy and they will refund the difference.

Most companies are wise to this and will crucify you if you cancel the policy soon after taking it out. You could get a refund as low as 50% if you cancel after just 3 months. What you call 'the difference' will usually be nowhere near a pro rata refund. One reason why they don't like an early cancellation is becuase it's often part of a scam involving staged accidents. Scammer insures his car, then stages an accident where he runs into the back of a car with 5 adults onboard. They all claim for whiplash and he cancels the policy.

Maybe pay in installments so that you can cancel payment once the policy is cancelled rather than wait for a refund.

Not as easy as it sounds. In many cases, you are borrowing the money from a finance company who pay the premium as a lump sum. So your repayments are not to the insurance company, you are paying back a 12 month term loan and if you cancel early, there will usually be penalties.

Bug_Bee_01

Thank you for the responses!

I would've thought along the lines of what coylmj has said re: refunding the difference; just after getting stung on a different type of contract we had to terminate early due to moving house unexpectedly, but worth checking out nonetheless so thanks JVince for the suggestion. I'll do some more Googling and see what I come up with on refunds...

Nightmare insuring cars in this country! Seems we're the only place where temp insurance isn't available!

on_the_roots

Insurance in Ireland is one of the most non sense things I've ever seen.

But regarding cancellation+ refunds, I've cancelled 2 policies so far, several months before they completed 1 year and I got surprisingly fair refunds.

Also be aware that if you are going to take insurance for another car in your name you can not use your existing NCB cert for that. So you would need to quote it as zero driving experience.