Thursday 30 December 2010

Kwik Fit and the mystery of the Insurance renewal "error"!

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On Wednesday my Car Insurance renewal arrived from Kwik Fit. I opened the envelope and nearly fell over after reading the quote for this years premium on the Scirocco.....£606!.

Now I realise that to some people a quote of £606 would appear to be not too bad a deal, after all I recently heard of a company quoting £3100 for a 17 year old to insure a 1 litre Nissan Micra!, and admittedly that would have been a shock.

So why then was I not impressed with the renewal quote? Well it's probably due to the fact that although I have now got one more years no claims, still have no convictions,I am another year older (and don't I know it!) and the car has no performance modifications (you can't really class charity graphics and a tow bar as "performance" enhancing!), the cost had gone up by almost £175 from the January 2009 premium.

Intrigued as to the reason for this increase , and the fact that the renewal also did not include several extras (10% discount on purchases at Kwik Fit,Free MOT,Breakdown recovery etc), I decided to log onto the Go Compare website to see if I could get a better deal.

I specified all of the requirements as per the renewal notice, in fact I also included Breakdown cover and legal expenses just for a laugh,then,after the rest of the details had been filled in I hit the return button and waited for my quotes.......

Imagine my surprise then when the third lowest quote came from...Kwik Fit Platinum Insurance!......£402 to be precise, that's £202 less than my renewal, and included more benefits!.

To cut a long story short I then called the Kwik Fit renewal line and explained my findings. The result? Well lets just say that after a rather confusing explanation by the phone sales guy, they have now agreed to insure me for £445 for fully comprehensive cover with Breakdown, excess protection and several other "extras" to boot.

The lesson is of course, never assume that your insurers have your best interests in mind, or indeed that they do anything more than churn out a random figure when your premium is due for renewal.

Remember.Never assume, always check!

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1 comment:

Mike Bowen said...

Too right, never assume anything. Nice post. I am in the process of looking for a new Insurance Policy as my renewal has gone up £90, which makes no sense what so ever, since I've got 1 extra year on my NCB, no accidents, no claims.... damn the price should go down not up!

Anyway, what are you thoughts on Kwik Fit Insurance? (besides them trying to RIP YOU OFF), I see they reduced the price in the end. I am looking at the Platinum package.