HIC insure give them a call

[gsn1978]

Hello,

Am i doing somthing wrong, i have a 2001 5 door GTIt Golf, im 29, 10+ driving, never clamed, got 5 points, 7 years no claims but still they want £300 vol excess £589.60....... Im sticking with Tescos insure £488.60 Full Comp with car and claims protected, only have 100 vol excess on it too

[R98 HUF]

im 32 driving since i was 17 and 1 fault claim and run a quote through for a MK4 R32 the other day on confussed and it came back under£500 with a £100 excess(no vlountry)...... so something looks wrong there...and Protected No Claims!!!!!

[DaveGTiMK]

I think for us normal people insurance will always be a big mystry, I shopped around for ages and found Elephant was the best for me, but noone on here seems to buy from the same place.

I think all insurance companys have a lottery style machine that spits out random amounts.

Maybe one day they way the premiums are calculated will be transparent enough for you to see where the money goes, although I am probably dreaming there.

The data must be the same for all of the insurance companies about area, crime rates and car specs etc so the only real variable is YOU, I know for a fact that ginger people pay more. 

[martinb]

Hello,

Am i doing somthing wrong, i have a 2001 5 door GTIt Golf, im 29, 10+ driving, never clamed, got 5 points, 7 years no claims but still they want £300 vol excess £589.60....... Im sticking with Tescos insure £488.60 Full Comp with car and claims protected, only have 100 vol excess on it too

Im guessing that what your doing wrong is that you have not read this topic: http://www.golfgtiforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=51793.0
and that you have just got an online quote then posted?  

as i have mentioned a few times now in reply to similar posts, the HIC website is in currently being completly rebuilt as the current site only looks at about 20-30 of the schemes we have available. If you call the office we have access to over 200 schemes now so the chances of us being able to find you a deal are much higher and if necessary as brokers we can often negotiate a discount if the screen rate is still not cheap enough, obviously the website cannot do that.  

Based on the limited information you have posted, i would be very surprised if we could not beat what Tesco have quoted fairly easily!  

Martin  

[DaveGTiMK]

^
your going to lose allot of business if you don't get your online quote machine properly up and running.

So many of us can't be bothered to phone a company these days as it is so easy to buy online, HIC lost out on my business simply on price and I phoned the office as encouraged to do so.

[martinb]

IMaybe one day they way the premiums are calculated will be transparent enough for you to see where the money goes, although I am probably dreaming there.

Under FSA regulations Insurance companies must tell you how your money is being allocated, we always have to state how much our admin fees are, how much you are paying for any add ons (agreed value, breakdown etc), how much interest you pay for instalments etc.

I think all insurance companys have a lottery style machine that spits out random amounts.

Most insurers will have their own target market so yeah you could phone 20 different brokers and get 20 wildly different quote, they could even all be underwritten by the same company! This is because brokers such as us are given different rates from underwriters based on what they specialise in (age type of car/age of driver etc), how big their account is (ie how much business they place with that underwriter), how profitable their account is (premium income v claims paid) etc etc.

The data must be the same for all of the insurance companies about area, crime rates and car specs etc

Different companies will base a lot of stuff on their own claims statistics etc so although there are often trends it is not necessarily the same accross the market. Also although most companies will use the same scale for grouping vehicles there are other factors eg we give target vehicle discounts on certain vehicles we specialise in and loadings on cars that have performed badly with claims etc so if you call for quotes on 2 cars that are the same group/value etc it still does not mean you will get the same price.

the only real variable is YOU,

This is to some extent very true though, as an insurance broker i often get the line "but my mate only pays £xxx" which is a bit of a nightmare cos so many people compare in this way even though its  largly irrelevant. There are so many variables like occupation, how long driving, claims/conviction, annual mileage, experience etc that insurers will often take into account so its very unlikly that if you are the same age as a mate and drive a similar car that you will get the same quote.

dunno about the ginger people thing....


I could probably sit here all day and type about all the different stuff insurers look at but it would soon become very boring but i hope that it least goes some way to explaining it.  

Martin  

[DaveGTiMK]

cool

[gsn1978]

i think the info above should be copyed and put on a sticky its very interesting....

[martinb]

^
your going to lose allot of business if you don't get your online quote machine properly up and running.

So many of us can't be bothered to phone a company these days as it is so easy to buy online, HIC lost out on my business simply on price and I phoned the office as encouraged to do so.

Its being sorted but we only recently increased our panel from 30ish to the 200+ schemes we have now and although im not an IT bod i understand it is very difficult as all the schemes have different criteria etc and the underwriters frequently change their rates. It has to be right cos we dont want people purchasing a policy that does not provide the required level of cover or placing risks with our underwriters that are not acceptable to them.

Personally i hate looking for insurance online (up until recently we could not insure our own cars so have tried).
Websites base the price on what you enter so its very easy to click the wrong box or something and completly change your quote and also you have not got an experienced person on the end of the phone who can actually underwrite the risk and give a discount if they feel the risk warrants it, you just get "computer says no......".

Also a lot of online quotes ask you the bare minimum questions needed then base the rest on assumptions (especially comparison websites such as confused/money supermarket) so its fairly common to get an online quote then when you try to incept it find you have to answer a load more questions and have more premium/fees to pay.

How many only quote engines can quote for heavily modified vehicles or tell you that when insuring your mint mk2 worth a couple of grand that without an agreed value you will be paid "book price" for the vehicle which is likely to be nowhere near your valuation?

We dont base our product 100% on price as the cheapest policy is not always the best. Online quotes are great for "standard risk" stuff and I think when our website has finished its revamp it will be a good thing but still think i would rather speak to a person espacially when it comes to more specialised stuff.

Martin  

[gsn1978]

why not have an 0800 number then, when i was younger and trying to insure my GSI/GTE/eGT/Pulsar GTiR, i would call all the 0800 numbers for prices, id never touch the 0854 numbers.