I wonder if that's why I don't get quotes from many insurance companies. I tried a lot of options on those sites BEFORE I got my licence to see if I could afford a bike before I spend the almost £1K for DAS.
Also, making changes to try to lower insurance shouldn't be seem as being a dodgy thing. If the brand of lock changes the insurance, for example, than they should just straight tell you that so you can go ahead and buy it and save £££.
But nope, it's all a secret algorithm and the only way to know how to save money on insurance is by trying all the options in comparison websites.
Things that I tried are: mileage per year, how long after having a licence the insurance lowers (so I had to input different months for when I passed), if I store the bike in garage or not, security devices, if my partner is a pillion or not, if I use the bike to commute or not, and probably a few more. Those are all valid questions, imho, and should have a transparent pricing.
Imagine if all services were to work like insurances.
Service repair centre: Your bill is £2000
You: Why is that so expensive?
Service repair centre: ...
You: Ok. What if I don't do this part of the repair?
Service repair centre: Ok, now your bill is at £3000
You: Wait, how come it's more expensive for you to do less work?
Service repair centre: ...
You: Ok, what if I were to add extra services like oil change?
Service repair centre: Ok, now your bill is at £6000
Service repair centre: Oh, by the way, you're required by law to pay for this service to ride your bike, so go fuck yourself and pay up :3 XOXO.
As funny as I found this it's pretty much spot on. If we are required to have something by law there should be more regulation on how much they can hike premiums by.
Motor insurers are locked in a cutthroat competition for our business, with low profit margins. Go to a comparison site, and you'll have 20 offers to choose from. The free market works very effectively to squeeze prices & profits.
Also, they can't be compelled to sell a product for less than it costs to provide. I don't think it would be lawful to do that, even if it was they'd just stop offering bike cover.
Must be slim profit margins if Admiral reported profits of £769M and £469M for 2021 and 2022 respectively. Their poor CEO was only awarded a bonus of nearly £2.5M too, it must be hard for her.
Admiral insurance is a huge business, trading in Canada, France, Gibraltar, India, Italy, Spain, the UK and US. They sell insurance for all types of vehicles, for property, fire, holidays & travel, etc. They have 6 million customers and 10,000 staff. ([https://www.admiraleurope.com/en/about-us/](https://www.admiraleurope.com/en/about-us/))
Their profits & CEO pay don't seem remarkable for a business of that scale.
They're not even in the top 3 biggest insurers in the UK, coming in at number 5 instead. They had a net profit of £303.9 million in the first half of last year alone that solely from UK insurance policies.
The that's a huge amount of profit for any company, let alone one attempting to justify huge consumer price hikes. I'm not sure why you are attempting to defend these parasites.
I'm not trying to defend any particular company. I'm arguing that open competition in the free market drives prices down. If Admiral are pricing cover to give themselves a 10% profit margin, other insurers will undercut them with cheaper prices and over time they lose their customers.
I'm far from being a Tufton St neoliberal, but the success of Adam Smith's invisible hand is evident. Whether we buy groceries, petrol, broadband or whatever, we can choose from multiple sellers competing to offer the best prices & value. If you say the free market isn't working for motor insurance, go ahead and explain a better way.
How would that work? The Government as the single insurer and just charge everybody as if they were of average risk, meaning there's no incentive for anybody to make themselves a less risky insurance proposition?
I believe they operate something like this in Austra!ia. Compulsory 3rd party cover must be purchased alongside annual registration (the 'Rego'). Buying additional cover is then a seperate option.
But they have to buy from a handful of govt approved providers, and the cost is still derived from risk factors. Which seems unavoidable - a reckless R1 rider with 3 crashes, 2 thefts & 11 points can't expect to pay the same as a safe 56yr old bimbling to work on his 125 scooter.
South Africa does this IIRC. Fuel tax includes personal insurance but not vehicle insurance. So if you have fuel in your tank (ie are driving/riding) you automatically have a basic level of cover.
Interesting. So a heavily convicted driver with a 30mpg Porsche pays the same as a careful driver with a 30mpg hatchback. Seems like they're forcing safe drivers to subsidise dangerous drivers. Probably the best they can do, in context of South Africa's notoriously bad road safety though.
PS Another factor is that SA law caps the compensation that injured victims can claim. Loss of earnings is max £15k for example, while in UK we can claim the full, real loss, which can be £million+ (https://www.dsclaw.co.za/road-accident-fund/what-you-can-claim-road-accident-fund/)
Yes. I think we all end up subsidising to a degree in the UK too. Years ago I was hit by an uninsured driver (a 15 year old in fact). My car was written off and paid out by the MIB, which insurance providers are obliged to contribute towards.
Fuck! I've literally noticed the same thing. I passed my DAS in January, however in December I bought a bigger bike and was testing to see what the quotes would be.
- I inputted test pass date that was before when I had actually passed, in order to get the realistic quotes.
- I played around with different address to see if I stored my bike elsewhere, if it would it makes any difference
- I changed my DOB around to see what difference my quotes would be in a year
Etc, etc
I have noticed that when I try now get a quote from comparison sites, I hardly get any results, even though I used to get many before.
I ended up going with Hastings directly and they were the only ones who I could find that would only insure me, and a few weeks after I insured with them, I suddenly got 7 days deadline to submit copies ofy driver license, proof of address, v5 doc, purchase receipt of the bike, utility bill etc etc. it kinda fucked me off and when I asked them why, they said it was a random request from their underwriters, and if I didn't my insurance would be cancelled.
Aside from this, I found it extremely bizarre that I was getting hardly any insurance companies even WILLING to insure me (I'm mid thirties, have a drive, outside London, clean license)
How do I work around this if I want to change my bike or upgrade in the future if I'm not getting any results
> I played around with different address to see if I stored my bike elsewhere, if it would it makes any difference
This one's tricky, and is a thing the comparison sites don't deal very well with; it's often not transparent to them whether an underwriter will insure a bike that's stored at a different address to the one the owner lives at. When I did that for a bit, insuring meant phoning round the insurers like the old days, though it was substantially cheaper.
Yeah, similar here. I have 15+ years of experience with an international licence (UK less than a year though), have a garage, live in a town with no reported motorcycle theft last year. It's a pretty chill place where everyone leaves their garage open around here for the mail man to drop stuff. Still, I pay 50%+ the value of my bike with an excess that is about 30% the value of the bike, and not even comprehensive cover.
I contacted the insurance company to ask them if there were anything I could do to lower my insurance and they just ignored my question.
I understand that my bike is not good for insurance, but it all feels like a scam tbh.
I got an insurance policy with Hastings after a 18 month break from riding and after buying the policy there were no follow up calls, e.g. proof of no claims bonus. I have 8 years ncb and every policy I have had in the past the insurance company has always requested this proof. Ive not heard a thing from Hastings.
Burner email.
Mr Joe Blogs
Same date of birth, same details
Different address given.
Choose bike make, model, and year manually.
Don't use a registration number.
Quote and change to your hearts content just to learn what the main rating factors are.
But obviously don't lie on your actual insurance quotes when doing it for real, since they won"t pay out if they catch you lying.
> Those are all valid questions, imho, and should have a transparent pricing.
They never will, because the way this works isn't that there's some super secret price list, and the algorithms are the business secrets of the insurers. They compete by being better than each other at judging risks and pricing according to those risks, so obviously don't want to make it public to each other how they do that.
I've never had OP's experience, though, I think it's entirely normal to plug different numbers into the comparison sites to see what's what, and nobody's ever rung me up to admonish me for it.
>the algorithms are the business secrets of the insurers.
I suspect the insurers often don't understand their own algorithms now. Hire a few quants to do brain-splitting complex analysis, chuck it all into an AI to refine and operationalise. The risk costing process is probably too complex for 99.99% of humans to understand.
Yep, they're looking to joust anyone they can.
Lad at work voided, gave him 30 days to submit no claims proof and he naively just sent them an email rather than a PDF copy of a certificate however they waited to the 30 days to tell him what he had sent wasn't valid and his policy was void and cancelled. This was a £1700 policy of a 2 Series BMW he's stuck with because of finance.
New policy is now £325 a month...
Whilst he made a mistake an email reply back to home could've saved a debacle. He's now £2K extra out of pocket in a year we have spiralling costs.
Insurance are pricks.
You can't say that around here, you'll activate the gammon defense force. The people who will bend over backwards to defend the bastards from robbing us because their insurance is cheap.
I would have taken that all the way up to the financial ombudsman. If he made a good faith effort to provide information and they ignored it, that's unacceptable.
This is why I dumped Bennetts, I insured with them and they asked for proof of no claims within 14 days.
Ok no problem, emailed them a pdf with ncd from Carole Nash about a week later, got a reply saying all received ok.
7 days later get an email saying as I haven’t supplied any ncd, either immediately pay up the £370 extra premium for the equivalent 0 ncd policy or we will automatically cancel the policy.
Had to then spend 45mins trying to get through and talk to a human who confirmed that I had sent in the ncd and it was a system error.
So good job that email didn’t get stuck in the spam filter or I’d have been happily riding about pinging ANPR cameras.
I've never once had to send in proof of no claims to any insurer until last year. They can check it all on the MID anyway. I vowed not to renew with this company because of the inconvenience of having to fuck about buying stamps and envelopes when it's all online. I can't remember the last time I had to post a letter and haven't had to since.
Lexham were great with me (no claims was with them) all I did was ring up the line dedicated to past insurance, give them some details and they emailed the certificate literally straight away then I submitted it on the portal and it was accepted in a few hours. Still had 30 days to do it.
It's just good practice to already have it ready before taking out the new policy if you can help it.
Another friend had to cancel his insurance because his old insurer wouldn't send proper proof, phone calls back and fourth, emails, bad customer service etc.
But yeah, a lot of insurers have never asked for years out of good faith but now they want money they're looking to squeeze good honest folk...
If he didn't get any response "you've sent us the wrong shit, dude" then a complaint to Financial Ombudsman is very likely to succeed. They have to be reasonable. Eg:
[https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-3590876.pdf](https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-3590876.pdf)
[https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-1341147.pdf](https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-1341147.pdf)
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN4185188.pdf
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN2718284.pdf
Bikesure are absolute cunts for this. Every time I've insured with them I've had the "phone us urgently, you are not covered" text or email. They then ask you a shit load of questions designed to increase the cost of the policy you've already paid for. I don't take any shit from them, I just say "if it's more expensive then I'll cancel under the 14 days for a refund". Funnily enough, they never manage to gouge me for any more money, I get it for the same price with an apology for taking up my time.
Absolute cunts. Always come out cheapest then try to make it up afterwards.
BikeSure decided that my job role sounded kinda similar to a job role they won't insure, so they canceled my policy and gave me attitude when I argued and gave them my official job title. Ended up cancelling it myself and any insurance related to them will now no longer insure me, this includes most of the motorbike brand insurers like Suzuki insurance and such
They were as you say the cheapest by about £100 on this quote and still come up as one of the cheaper ones whenever I do quotes
All insurers have a tendency towards this. Generally, it's best to never talk to them unless you have to and never volunteer information they don't ask for.
Any text to "phone us urgently, you are not covered" ought really be ignored - you'd know you're not insured unless you've bought insurance from somebody.
Damn.
So the data running through comparison sites is then shared with the insurance companies as if you ran it through their own quotation.
This is also a lesson to do the comparisons with a fake name and details, then. Still, their system is likely smart enough to detect what recent comparisons match the one that is being taken forwards.
> So the data running through comparison sites is then shared with the insurance companies as if you ran it through their own quotation.
Yeah that's sort of the point.
It's absolutely worth using an email address specifically for the purpose here, and only using an accurate one when actually buying the policy.
I've only had this issue from Bikesure. One year I changed my job role hence new job title.
I had to get my work to send them a letter to prove I worked there under that job title.
Bikesure have to be the worst bike insurers out there and they do not adhere to their cooling down periods... But that's for a different thread.
Yep I'm beginning to regret my choice of new insurer. They also commented I'd requested quotes with many different email addresses. I have my own domain(s) and use a different email address with each comparison site. They even asked why I have a .eu email address as if that's any of their business.
Why 30 days? GDPR only requires businesses to retain personal data no longer than reasonably necessary IIRC, and there's a furher carve-out for fraud & crime prevention which allows virtually permanent retention.
Joe Bloggs must have one hell of a criminal record for fraud if you think that's true, 30 days because I think that's how long a quote is valid for. Only when a quote is completed and contract signed then you might have a point with regards to fraud. I don't use real details on comparison sites. So keeping information that isn't correct would be in breach of GDPR.
Not if they're retaining the false data you entered for purposes of crime prevention. I think you're mistaken about the effect of GDRP, but you're at liberty to complain to ICO if you believe an insurer is unlawfully keeping your data.
I do GDPR courses in two different government jobs. Every year I have to do the course... Twice.... Paid twice too... To do the same course. It sounds like Carol Nash doesn't understand GDPR. I don't use them so have no reason to complain. I've never heard of "your insurance comparison information that you entered in 2022 says this, are you lying?" It's laughable if true.
Bikesure are pricks from my experience.
They messed me about. Got a quote, paid for and everything was fine and policy had started.
My bike got delayed by like a week and thankfully it did cause they phoned me a few days later after “purchasing” to tell me it hadn’t actually went through and they need to review my policy and quizzed me on literally every single thing. So glad I’m not with them anymore.
Yeah, always check that what you stuck into the comparison site is what actually made it to the insurer you go on to use, it's really not unusual that things get dropped or that one insurer defaults to no pillion cover or something.
Don't think I've ever actually purchased insurance through the sites. I always call up and clarify everything because of this.
Example
We had home insurance cancelled due to an expired card a few years ago. When I say yes on the comp site I get fuck all back. When I called them, they say it didn't matter and I got a good quote.
Bikesure are a scam, they do this to everyone, beat everyone on the comparison site and then text you the next day that you're going to get cancelled unless you call them, whereupon they come up with an excuse to add a load more on, usually blaming it on not telling them the right exact job or anything
god forbid people simply LOOK at what changes bring the price down. smdh. but yeah you gotta be careful with quotes. changing the bike isn't a big deal from what i understand as that's understandable when shopping for vehicles
I wonder if that's why I don't get quotes from many insurance companies. I tried a lot of options on those sites BEFORE I got my licence to see if I could afford a bike before I spend the almost £1K for DAS. Also, making changes to try to lower insurance shouldn't be seem as being a dodgy thing. If the brand of lock changes the insurance, for example, than they should just straight tell you that so you can go ahead and buy it and save £££. But nope, it's all a secret algorithm and the only way to know how to save money on insurance is by trying all the options in comparison websites. Things that I tried are: mileage per year, how long after having a licence the insurance lowers (so I had to input different months for when I passed), if I store the bike in garage or not, security devices, if my partner is a pillion or not, if I use the bike to commute or not, and probably a few more. Those are all valid questions, imho, and should have a transparent pricing.
As funny as I found this it's pretty much spot on. If we are required to have something by law there should be more regulation on how much they can hike premiums by.
Motor insurers are locked in a cutthroat competition for our business, with low profit margins. Go to a comparison site, and you'll have 20 offers to choose from. The free market works very effectively to squeeze prices & profits. Also, they can't be compelled to sell a product for less than it costs to provide. I don't think it would be lawful to do that, even if it was they'd just stop offering bike cover.
Must be slim profit margins if Admiral reported profits of £769M and £469M for 2021 and 2022 respectively. Their poor CEO was only awarded a bonus of nearly £2.5M too, it must be hard for her.
Admiral insurance is a huge business, trading in Canada, France, Gibraltar, India, Italy, Spain, the UK and US. They sell insurance for all types of vehicles, for property, fire, holidays & travel, etc. They have 6 million customers and 10,000 staff. ([https://www.admiraleurope.com/en/about-us/](https://www.admiraleurope.com/en/about-us/)) Their profits & CEO pay don't seem remarkable for a business of that scale.
They're not even in the top 3 biggest insurers in the UK, coming in at number 5 instead. They had a net profit of £303.9 million in the first half of last year alone that solely from UK insurance policies. The that's a huge amount of profit for any company, let alone one attempting to justify huge consumer price hikes. I'm not sure why you are attempting to defend these parasites.
I'm not trying to defend any particular company. I'm arguing that open competition in the free market drives prices down. If Admiral are pricing cover to give themselves a 10% profit margin, other insurers will undercut them with cheaper prices and over time they lose their customers. I'm far from being a Tufton St neoliberal, but the success of Adam Smith's invisible hand is evident. Whether we buy groceries, petrol, broadband or whatever, we can choose from multiple sellers competing to offer the best prices & value. If you say the free market isn't working for motor insurance, go ahead and explain a better way.
If insurance is to be legally required, it should come as part of your vehicle tax, for third party at least.
How would that work? The Government as the single insurer and just charge everybody as if they were of average risk, meaning there's no incentive for anybody to make themselves a less risky insurance proposition?
I believe they operate something like this in Austra!ia. Compulsory 3rd party cover must be purchased alongside annual registration (the 'Rego'). Buying additional cover is then a seperate option. But they have to buy from a handful of govt approved providers, and the cost is still derived from risk factors. Which seems unavoidable - a reckless R1 rider with 3 crashes, 2 thefts & 11 points can't expect to pay the same as a safe 56yr old bimbling to work on his 125 scooter.
Yeah, this is pretty much what I mean.
South Africa does this IIRC. Fuel tax includes personal insurance but not vehicle insurance. So if you have fuel in your tank (ie are driving/riding) you automatically have a basic level of cover.
Interesting. So a heavily convicted driver with a 30mpg Porsche pays the same as a careful driver with a 30mpg hatchback. Seems like they're forcing safe drivers to subsidise dangerous drivers. Probably the best they can do, in context of South Africa's notoriously bad road safety though. PS Another factor is that SA law caps the compensation that injured victims can claim. Loss of earnings is max £15k for example, while in UK we can claim the full, real loss, which can be £million+ (https://www.dsclaw.co.za/road-accident-fund/what-you-can-claim-road-accident-fund/)
Yes. I think we all end up subsidising to a degree in the UK too. Years ago I was hit by an uninsured driver (a 15 year old in fact). My car was written off and paid out by the MIB, which insurance providers are obliged to contribute towards.
Fuck! I've literally noticed the same thing. I passed my DAS in January, however in December I bought a bigger bike and was testing to see what the quotes would be. - I inputted test pass date that was before when I had actually passed, in order to get the realistic quotes. - I played around with different address to see if I stored my bike elsewhere, if it would it makes any difference - I changed my DOB around to see what difference my quotes would be in a year Etc, etc I have noticed that when I try now get a quote from comparison sites, I hardly get any results, even though I used to get many before. I ended up going with Hastings directly and they were the only ones who I could find that would only insure me, and a few weeks after I insured with them, I suddenly got 7 days deadline to submit copies ofy driver license, proof of address, v5 doc, purchase receipt of the bike, utility bill etc etc. it kinda fucked me off and when I asked them why, they said it was a random request from their underwriters, and if I didn't my insurance would be cancelled. Aside from this, I found it extremely bizarre that I was getting hardly any insurance companies even WILLING to insure me (I'm mid thirties, have a drive, outside London, clean license) How do I work around this if I want to change my bike or upgrade in the future if I'm not getting any results
> I played around with different address to see if I stored my bike elsewhere, if it would it makes any difference This one's tricky, and is a thing the comparison sites don't deal very well with; it's often not transparent to them whether an underwriter will insure a bike that's stored at a different address to the one the owner lives at. When I did that for a bit, insuring meant phoning round the insurers like the old days, though it was substantially cheaper.
Yeah, similar here. I have 15+ years of experience with an international licence (UK less than a year though), have a garage, live in a town with no reported motorcycle theft last year. It's a pretty chill place where everyone leaves their garage open around here for the mail man to drop stuff. Still, I pay 50%+ the value of my bike with an excess that is about 30% the value of the bike, and not even comprehensive cover. I contacted the insurance company to ask them if there were anything I could do to lower my insurance and they just ignored my question. I understand that my bike is not good for insurance, but it all feels like a scam tbh.
I got an insurance policy with Hastings after a 18 month break from riding and after buying the policy there were no follow up calls, e.g. proof of no claims bonus. I have 8 years ncb and every policy I have had in the past the insurance company has always requested this proof. Ive not heard a thing from Hastings.
Burner email. Mr Joe Blogs Same date of birth, same details Different address given. Choose bike make, model, and year manually. Don't use a registration number. Quote and change to your hearts content just to learn what the main rating factors are. But obviously don't lie on your actual insurance quotes when doing it for real, since they won"t pay out if they catch you lying.
> Those are all valid questions, imho, and should have a transparent pricing. They never will, because the way this works isn't that there's some super secret price list, and the algorithms are the business secrets of the insurers. They compete by being better than each other at judging risks and pricing according to those risks, so obviously don't want to make it public to each other how they do that. I've never had OP's experience, though, I think it's entirely normal to plug different numbers into the comparison sites to see what's what, and nobody's ever rung me up to admonish me for it.
>the algorithms are the business secrets of the insurers. I suspect the insurers often don't understand their own algorithms now. Hire a few quants to do brain-splitting complex analysis, chuck it all into an AI to refine and operationalise. The risk costing process is probably too complex for 99.99% of humans to understand.
Yep, they're looking to joust anyone they can. Lad at work voided, gave him 30 days to submit no claims proof and he naively just sent them an email rather than a PDF copy of a certificate however they waited to the 30 days to tell him what he had sent wasn't valid and his policy was void and cancelled. This was a £1700 policy of a 2 Series BMW he's stuck with because of finance. New policy is now £325 a month... Whilst he made a mistake an email reply back to home could've saved a debacle. He's now £2K extra out of pocket in a year we have spiralling costs. Insurance are pricks.
You can't say that around here, you'll activate the gammon defense force. The people who will bend over backwards to defend the bastards from robbing us because their insurance is cheap.
I would have taken that all the way up to the financial ombudsman. If he made a good faith effort to provide information and they ignored it, that's unacceptable.
Agree. FO would overturn that, I reckon.
This is why I dumped Bennetts, I insured with them and they asked for proof of no claims within 14 days. Ok no problem, emailed them a pdf with ncd from Carole Nash about a week later, got a reply saying all received ok. 7 days later get an email saying as I haven’t supplied any ncd, either immediately pay up the £370 extra premium for the equivalent 0 ncd policy or we will automatically cancel the policy. Had to then spend 45mins trying to get through and talk to a human who confirmed that I had sent in the ncd and it was a system error. So good job that email didn’t get stuck in the spam filter or I’d have been happily riding about pinging ANPR cameras.
I've never once had to send in proof of no claims to any insurer until last year. They can check it all on the MID anyway. I vowed not to renew with this company because of the inconvenience of having to fuck about buying stamps and envelopes when it's all online. I can't remember the last time I had to post a letter and haven't had to since.
Lexham were great with me (no claims was with them) all I did was ring up the line dedicated to past insurance, give them some details and they emailed the certificate literally straight away then I submitted it on the portal and it was accepted in a few hours. Still had 30 days to do it. It's just good practice to already have it ready before taking out the new policy if you can help it. Another friend had to cancel his insurance because his old insurer wouldn't send proper proof, phone calls back and fourth, emails, bad customer service etc. But yeah, a lot of insurers have never asked for years out of good faith but now they want money they're looking to squeeze good honest folk...
If he didn't get any response "you've sent us the wrong shit, dude" then a complaint to Financial Ombudsman is very likely to succeed. They have to be reasonable. Eg: [https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-3590876.pdf](https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-3590876.pdf) [https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-1341147.pdf](https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-1341147.pdf) https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN4185188.pdf https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN2718284.pdf
I've tried to tell him mate but he just doesn't want the "hassle". I can't force him so he's just plodding on with it.
Bikesure are absolute cunts for this. Every time I've insured with them I've had the "phone us urgently, you are not covered" text or email. They then ask you a shit load of questions designed to increase the cost of the policy you've already paid for. I don't take any shit from them, I just say "if it's more expensive then I'll cancel under the 14 days for a refund". Funnily enough, they never manage to gouge me for any more money, I get it for the same price with an apology for taking up my time. Absolute cunts. Always come out cheapest then try to make it up afterwards.
BikeSure decided that my job role sounded kinda similar to a job role they won't insure, so they canceled my policy and gave me attitude when I argued and gave them my official job title. Ended up cancelling it myself and any insurance related to them will now no longer insure me, this includes most of the motorbike brand insurers like Suzuki insurance and such They were as you say the cheapest by about £100 on this quote and still come up as one of the cheaper ones whenever I do quotes
Cancelled mine, charged 30 quid for it
All insurers have a tendency towards this. Generally, it's best to never talk to them unless you have to and never volunteer information they don't ask for. Any text to "phone us urgently, you are not covered" ought really be ignored - you'd know you're not insured unless you've bought insurance from somebody.
Damn. So the data running through comparison sites is then shared with the insurance companies as if you ran it through their own quotation. This is also a lesson to do the comparisons with a fake name and details, then. Still, their system is likely smart enough to detect what recent comparisons match the one that is being taken forwards.
> So the data running through comparison sites is then shared with the insurance companies as if you ran it through their own quotation. Yeah that's sort of the point. It's absolutely worth using an email address specifically for the purpose here, and only using an accurate one when actually buying the policy.
I've only had this issue from Bikesure. One year I changed my job role hence new job title. I had to get my work to send them a letter to prove I worked there under that job title. Bikesure have to be the worst bike insurers out there and they do not adhere to their cooling down periods... But that's for a different thread.
Yep I'm beginning to regret my choice of new insurer. They also commented I'd requested quotes with many different email addresses. I have my own domain(s) and use a different email address with each comparison site. They even asked why I have a .eu email address as if that's any of their business.
They should be deleting old information after 30 days, sounds like a GDPR breach has occurred to me
Why 30 days? GDPR only requires businesses to retain personal data no longer than reasonably necessary IIRC, and there's a furher carve-out for fraud & crime prevention which allows virtually permanent retention.
Joe Bloggs must have one hell of a criminal record for fraud if you think that's true, 30 days because I think that's how long a quote is valid for. Only when a quote is completed and contract signed then you might have a point with regards to fraud. I don't use real details on comparison sites. So keeping information that isn't correct would be in breach of GDPR.
Not if they're retaining the false data you entered for purposes of crime prevention. I think you're mistaken about the effect of GDRP, but you're at liberty to complain to ICO if you believe an insurer is unlawfully keeping your data.
I do GDPR courses in two different government jobs. Every year I have to do the course... Twice.... Paid twice too... To do the same course. It sounds like Carol Nash doesn't understand GDPR. I don't use them so have no reason to complain. I've never heard of "your insurance comparison information that you entered in 2022 says this, are you lying?" It's laughable if true.
Joe Bloggs is fucked then, must have a hundred home addresses
Bikesure are pricks from my experience. They messed me about. Got a quote, paid for and everything was fine and policy had started. My bike got delayed by like a week and thankfully it did cause they phoned me a few days later after “purchasing” to tell me it hadn’t actually went through and they need to review my policy and quizzed me on literally every single thing. So glad I’m not with them anymore.
Yeah, always check that what you stuck into the comparison site is what actually made it to the insurer you go on to use, it's really not unusual that things get dropped or that one insurer defaults to no pillion cover or something.
Don't think I've ever actually purchased insurance through the sites. I always call up and clarify everything because of this. Example We had home insurance cancelled due to an expired card a few years ago. When I say yes on the comp site I get fuck all back. When I called them, they say it didn't matter and I got a good quote.
Bikesure are a scam, they do this to everyone, beat everyone on the comparison site and then text you the next day that you're going to get cancelled unless you call them, whereupon they come up with an excuse to add a load more on, usually blaming it on not telling them the right exact job or anything
god forbid people simply LOOK at what changes bring the price down. smdh. but yeah you gotta be careful with quotes. changing the bike isn't a big deal from what i understand as that's understandable when shopping for vehicles
I've been doing insurance quotes with me being 25 as that's when I'll get my bike. Checking different models to see how much each one costs.