[paul-hanmore]

Thanks Graham,

Very interesting. Your mother in law’s £800 seems very steep to me, I presume she only doodles around locally and rarely gets into a four wheel drift, so maybe a black box would be an acceptable burden if a good cash saving were to be had? I still do too much open road driving with liberal ‘freedom of expression’ so I don’t want a ‘black box’ monitoring me. Maybe in 10 years time, if I’m still in a fit condition to drive I might have to accept such an imposition in order to be able to afford the premiums.  Fortunately my partner is 10 years younger than me so maybe we will have to say she is the main driver (and she may well be by then) to keep the premiums reasonable?

BTW, my partner’s mother was done for speeding a few years ago (age about 78) purely because she is a dreadful driver and hadn’t the faintest idea she was exceeding the limit even though she was on the road that went past her house! She went on a speed awareness course – I wonder what the other attendees thought of her? I can see a black box being useful in getting her off the road!

[paul-hanmore]

I have very recently renewed comprehensive cover for my 2002 4200CC Coupe and surveyed the market as I do every year. Once again, as in previous years, some of the companies identified it from the registration number as a ‘Spyder.’ and their websites would not let me correct it. How do they manage this? (Last year I even had an argument about it with someone over the ‘phone who almost called me a liar, prompting me to offer to send him a copy of my registration document) and he said a Coupe was a worse risk than the open top!  Oh, and once again Age Co declined to quote me. (I have challenged them but don’t expect a reply. It’s their loss anyway.) Salient points: 72 yo driver living between Bristol & Bath, licence held 54 years, car with tracker always garaged, max 4k miles pa, 12 years NCD, no convictions and no voluntary excess. My renewal from SAGA was £302.80 with a £400 excess,(an increase of £2.52). Anyway, I found once again that Money Supermarket gave the most competitive rates, with a newcomer to me; ‘Flux Direct’ offering £281.50 with a total excess of £250 and legal expenses included. Pretty good you might think but then I decided to try including my partner (age 62, licence held 32 years, no convictions or claims except for a prang in 2016 caused by a third party). This resulted in Flux reducing to £253 with excess reduced to £150 and Churchill offering £250.88 with legal and a £600 excess. Before taking one of these offers I thought I’d give SAGA a chance. With my partner added they reduced to £243.15 but with the excess still at £400. The best partner added reduction of the lot – £59.65 so I took their offer. My partner is most unlikely to drive this car but I’m intrigued to know why adding her has lowered my premium. No insurer has ever asked me to fit a black box – and I would find such a thing most unacceptable.

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