Gave them a call about my insurance dilema and spoke to a senior advisor on saturday (open on sundays - impressive!) and managed to get my quote down to £1050.99 which ain't too bad (see thread "Should I declare....") considering. Trinity - any idea why driving without insurance is such a high grade endorsement. It technically doesn't make me any more of a risk and i did a quote out of interest - if it had been a drink driving ban it would be the same price as what i got now!!! :headvswal

sui generis

 

Can't argue with Latin Nelson :D

Your situation sounds very unfair mate, are you tellin us everything? Did you get a solicitor on to this?

So the insurance company didn't run the number plate through their data base? Did your dad give them the wrong registration number? What car were you actually insured to drive then? Did you have an insurance certificate for a Fiesta but with the wrong reg number? If yes, that's proof enough that it was a genuine error and a good solictor would sort you out I'm sure. And it would mean you were paying insurance on a car that belonged to someone else anywhere in the country, so claim the premium back for that!! If they say you weren't insured they cant argue your full refund.

 

Are you the registered keeper of the car you weren't insured for, if not I take it your policy doesn't allow you to drive "any car not belonging to you" as most do.

 

If it really was a genuine mistake you can sort it, did your dad do the insurance over the phone? If so, ask to hear the tape recording of that conversation , I wouldn't rest if it was me, give them some shit..

 

Cheers,

 

Yeah all details i have given have been correct so far. My father went into a branch of Hill House Hammond last August and did it there and then. The policy document has the right VRN but where it says engine capacity instead of 1242cc 16V it said 1299 8V that was the only omision. I have spoken to a solicitor prior to my court appearance and was advised that even under the circumstance the minimum i can recieve is 6 points and as it is my first two years of driving that means curtains for licence :(

I've posted the question on a forum I know that's used by coppers, solicitors, etc (and anyone else) so I'll let you know the general opinion tomorrow .

OK, so having just recently shelled out for a Z after 6 months of looking around I've spent a fair amount of time off and on getting insurance quotes. Now I used to think I had a reasonable idea how insurance worked; y'know, what made it go up and what made it go down and blah blah blah (age blah,blah, powerful car blah blah).

 

But then I found this Z -- now mine -- and I really started looking in earnest. So here's a cautionary tale. My Z is a J-spec TT 2+2 manual. Right, so here we go.

 

I looked into insurance companies using the forums here, and managed to get a quote of just over £600 from one of the sites mentioned here (can't remember which one at this point because it's probably 3 weeks ago). The details I put in were basically as above. I said the car was a 300 ZX (watch this, it's very pertinent). Anyway, I saw the car, loved it, went back for more quotes to the same site (gives you top 3), but this time said the car was a Fairlady. Now saying the car is a Fairlady automatically makes it an import, and this was a horrible moment, because having handed over a deposit on the thing the lowest quote I got was £1700.... just because it's an import. Some extra info: I'm 28 years old (29 this Thursday) and a software engineer, 4 years no claims, and an SP30 conviction from February 4th 2001.

 

Ouch!! So then I went back to the original £600 quote, and found the name of the company giving this quote, then googled for them and found their website. Turns out they're another company that searches loads of different insurance companies. Anyway, various tinkering around with quotes ensues, and for a imported 300 ZX I get a quote of £600ish. However, by this time I've realised that specifying a voluntary excess of £0 will not increase my quote over specifying a voluntary excess of £250 - you learn something new every day because I'd in fact been led to believe that if you increase your excess your premium will decrease. Yeah, well that's clearly rubbish then.

 

Anyway, I then change the car to an imported Fairlady, and the quote goes up (as expected) but this time to only £700. Phew. My relief was palpable I can tell you. So then there's this button on the quote screen that allows you to see what the quote would be if you added a £100 voluntary excess (at this stage I'm still using £0), so I click it thinking that it might go down a bit further, but guess what? Quote goes UP by £200 to £900. Unbelievable. How does this work?!? I mean how does this actually work???!?

 

So anyway, I go back to my £0 voluntary excess and phone these people up. Now hilariously the insurance provider they're dealing with is Norwich Union (who I was insured with on my previous car), but so anyway I deal with these people who are basically middlemen, and confirming the details with the lady on the phone she's saying, "Oooh no, the quote's a bit higher than that. At least £200 more." She says she'll call me back. That's fine, so I decide to phone Norwich Union directly as an existing customer, give them all the details, and guess what? Additional amount payable for the new car brings cost of policy to around £700. Just for additional info my Clio cost just under £400 to insure, and it had a piddly 1.6 8v engine pushing out 92 bhp. Makes it from 0 - 60 in 10.4 seconds, but now that feels more like 10.4 years... whereas the Z will do it in just over half that time and has three times the power. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the disproportionately low quote, I'm just commenting on the lack of logic or reason behind it.)

 

Wild. Like I said, I used to kid myself that I had some vague understanding of how car insurance works but not any more. Now here's what I think they actually do to calculate your premium (I admit, this is a very geeky suggestion):

 

What I think happens is that you fill in all your details on the online form or on the phone, and they take all these details and use them to generate a checksum. They then use this checksum as the seed for a random number generator and they take the first number produced by this generator and perform some sort of mathematical transformation on it based on the date you want the cover to start, and then apply a scaling factor to get it into sensible currency units, and that's it: there's your insurance premium.

 

One of my housemates is slightly more sensible and suggested that the insurance companies involved possessed a risk profile that suggested drivers who wanted to take on a voluntary excess were more likely to make insurance claims than those confident enough to specify a £0 excess but I'm not really sure I buy this. In any case I think my explanation is more fun. My explanation also gives me license to brand insurers as wicked and tricksy hobbitses and suchlike. ;-)

 

Sorry to hear you're having so much trouble with them. A necessary evil though unfortunately.

The thread is here:

 

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=159453&f=10&h=0

 

You may have to be a member to see it I dont know, here's one of the posts anyway..

 

 

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Slider

 

Seems to me there is more in this than stated.

 

See Section 148 (2) (f) Road Traffic Act 1988.

 

Also a policy obtained by false and material representation remains valid re 3rd party risks at criminal law, until such time as Insurers have taken steps to avoid it.Duran v Maclaren [1956] backed up by Adams v Dunn {1978}

 

Obviously a Co has avenues at Civil law to reclaim.

 

But if things as stated then letter from Insurance Company should resolve.

 

DVD [END]

 

 

Still think you should see a good solicitor mate.

That a post about me or someone else in exactly the same situation ;) ? Cheers Trevz good readin and im gonna get on the blower to the insurance company in a min and see where i stand as regards to being insured aginast 3rd party risks...

It's a thread about you, it's on the link above, but you might have to be a member to read it?

If you just talk to Norwich Union they'll fob you off for sure because they dont want the hassle. You need to tell them you're taking legal advice and also suggest some bad publicity for them as you have a motoring journalist interested in your story.

Possibly even Watchdog! Lay it on thick! Then suggest a letter from them stating that you were covered 3rd party would be a simpler solution for everybody.

Here's the latest from your thread.. and let us know how you get on, cheers.

 

 

Mr E 01:06

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6 points would seem very very harsh indeed for an honest mistake.

 

 

Dwight VanDriver 07:45

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Deeps

 

Have your friend visit CAB and a session with their free Solitor.

 

There is more to this than he's letting on in my opinion.

 

DVD

 

 

oakky 09:29

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When you are given a producer don't you just take your docs to the local police station and show them to civilian at desk? In which case how would they pick up that the engine size is incorrect do the bib check the details there and then against the dvla database?

 

 

Author

Discussion

 

loaf 12:50

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s143 RTA 1988 requires a policy to be in force for 3rd party risks in relation to the use by the driver of the vehicle, and a Certificate of Motor Insurance to be issued for same. Normally on a *certificate* the engine size is not noted, just the reg or chassis number - the detail goes on the Schedule - and the Cert is the only bit BiB would normally check.

 

Even if the certificate was obtained fraudulently - and it sounds like it wasn't - the insurer is still liable in Law for the damages and would need to pursue a civil action against the driver for recovery.

 

Sounds to me like a way overzealous BiB and a complete 2@ of a CPS brief - 'in the public interest' my @rse.

 

A letter from the ins co stating that the mistake has been rectified, any additional premium paid, and that the car has AFATC been on risk since inception of the policy should do the trick, along with a few choice words from your own brief to the mag about the CPS's decision to bring the case in the first place.

 

All IMHO, natch

Cheers trev :)