Insurance is due at the end of December. Insurance companies are fickle and change all the times. What good deals have you had lately?
Don't get quotes yet - MSE (Martin Lewis' mob) suggest you get a better deal 21 days before the renewal date. Seems underwriters have worked out those who leave it late are the highest risk and those that buy early can be lulled into thinking they have the best quote by being early.
I will test this over the weekend when I will be 3 weeks away from the renewal on my car
How will you know if the quote you receive this weekend is better or worse than one you might have received two weekends ago or indeed, next weekend?
Same as Mr Lewis: create a fake profile with the same data apart from name and get a quote. Rinse & repeat at a later date. Pretty easy to do with the likes of Confused.com as they will store your profile. All you need is 2 email addresses to set up a second account. Do it once and you can use the same profiles each year if you are so inclined. Just make sure you do not give the fuckers your actual phone number. You can also mess about with other variables such as levels of excess, add-ons and additional drivers (the latter can lower the premium too, it seems)
Same as Mr Lewis: create a fake profile with the same data apart from name and get a quote. Rinse & repeat at a later date. Pretty easy to do with the likes of Confused.com as they will store your profile. All you need is 2 email addresses to set up a second account. Do it once and you can use the same profiles each year if you are so inclined. Just make sure you do not give the fuckers your actual phone number. You can also mess about with other variables such as levels of excess, add-ons and additional drivers (the latter can lower the premium too, it seems)
Same as Mr Lewis: create a fake profile with the same data apart from name and get a quote. Rinse & repeat at a later date. Pretty easy to do with the likes of Confused.com as they will store your profile. All you need is 2 email addresses to set up a second account. Do it once and you can use the same profiles each year if you are so inclined. Just make sure you do not give the fuckers your actual phone number. You can also mess about with other variables such as levels of excess, add-ons and additional drivers (the latter can lower the premium too, it seems)
Results are in: in just a week, the quote went down from £206 to £193 and a few weeks ago were over £300. Hastings renewal price £277 so the can get lost.
New policy will be with Stabilis via a broker called Sure Thing! £30 admin fees for changes.
https://stabilismga.co.uk/#whoweare
Stabilis, is not the insurer per-se, it’s an MGA *, flogging its wares through a ‘broker’ called Sure Thing! which is tied to Stabilis through ownership. The fault with this kind of arrangement, as my friend found with MCE (who do something pretty similar) is that if you have a problem your ‘broker’ (who should act as your agent) is not fully independent in any dispute you might have with the insurer. They are, to some degree or another, conflicted as they share a common financial ownership.
Anyway, cheap as chips and apparently underwritten ultimately out of Malta. You gotta love the EU and its Freedom of Services provision.... no, wait a minute, the EU is shite. I read it here.
* The insurer seems to be: Accredited Europe, based in Malta, owned it seems by Randall & Quilter, who are: http://www.rqih.com/ who are HQ’d in Bermuda.