insurance.....

[Elanconvert]

I am sure someone will be able to answer this one....
I have recently made a claim on my daily driver insurance [scraped someone's door in a car park concentrating on missing a bollard on driver's side - left my details on their wIndscreen of course - is it just me or are parking spaces smaller than they used to be? ok I know cars are bigger..].....my car was not damaged, and 30 odd years NCB was protected....
the point is.....do I have to declare this when my elan policy comes up for renewal?
I am assuming yes.....and I may be punished for my honesty....
fred

[elanfan1]

As a former insurance man the technical answer is yes - it?s what they call a material fact and should be disclosed on all your car insurances. This is so they can correctly underwrite your risk. From their point of view your not telling them means they are denied the opportunity to charge the appropriate premium or even decide whether they want to insure you at all. Non disclosure can technically lead to voiding your policy which could mean they won?t pay your damage and they may well come after you for any third party damage they have to pay out on which they have to pay in law. Phew!

In practical terms however, if you make sure you settle directly wit the third party (and I?d get a full and final settlement receipt) and you don?t tell them your registration number it?s unlikely your insurers will ever find out unless you tell them.

[Craven]

Unfortunately the person?s car you damage will also have to declare the accident as well, this will stay on their record for the next five years. Unfair or what.

[MarkDa]

Most companies require you to declare all incidents whether or not a claim was made.
As others have said they can void your policy and then you have to declare that when asked!
I have taken the view that if you hit something other than another vehicle and pay cash for the damage then no one will get to know.
You may trust another driver to not declare the incident but you never know.
I had a crash last year in my daily driver a d it made no difference to my elan insurance when I declared it.

[Elanconvert]

a footnote......had a renewal notice for the elan ...?136 [before I had declared the car park incident]......up from ?115 this year...
just for a laugh,went on a comparison site for some new quotes and.....guess what?
quote from my existing company [after declaring the incident online] ?91 !!!!

so, not only am I not being rewarded for loyalty, I was actually being penalised!!!

the moral being .......don't assume that your renewal quote is the best the company can do!

fred

[69S4]

a footnote......had a renewal notice for the elan ...?136 [before I had declared the car park incident]......up from ?115 this year...
just for a laugh,went on a comparison site for some new quotes and.....guess what?
quote from my existing company [after declaring the incident online] ?91 !!!!

so, not only am I not being rewarded for loyalty, I was actually being penalised!!!

the moral being .......don't assume that your renewal quote is the best the company can do!

fred

We went from being a 'loyal' customer of Aviva at a premium of over ?800 for our Land Rover Discovery to a comparison site devotee at under ?200 for exactly the same cover. Each year whichever company we happen to be with tries it on again with a huge hike in premium for accepting their renewal quote or flat line if we go back (even to them) through the comparison sites. It's exactly the same for house insurance and travel insurance. Unless there's huge numbers of auto renewers who don't check or quibble I can't see why or how it makes economic sense but that seems to be the market at the moment.

Re declaring incidents, somebody drove into the back of the Discovery when we were stopped at lights 4 1/2 yrs ago. Not our fault but I've declared it at every renewal since then and its not made any difference in premium. I asked why a couple of times and was told it was because the cost of the repairs was too low to bother about (a vastly inflated ?1500 for us)

[Craven]

Days of no blame accident claims have long gone, if you were unfortunate to say be bumped while parked on two or three separate occasions over a five year period, your insurer may well consider you have a higher probability to be involved in an accident than average and increase the cost of your cover.