tut wrote:They can talk all they bloody well want, and then go and stuff themselves.
tut
Tut, the argument is not about what they can prove, it is about what the contract between you and them says. Of course you can then do as you like and if it so happens that your usage of the car is not strictly in accordance with the contract, you may still be able to pull the wool over their eyes in the event of a claim.
No doubt you can insure people as named drivers and have them drive your car regularly and it is not a problem provided you are the main driver (meaning that you drive the car most). The key issue is who is the main driver nominated on the contract and who is _actually_ the main driver. In non-obvious cases you ought to discuss with your insurer how they select the main driver and come to a mutual agreement. For example, our XC90 is driven regularly by both of us; Katie does more journeys, but I certainly do more miles. Which of us in the main driver? The insurer agreed that it would be me, but of course other insurers may have taken a different point of view.
I am sure you understand this.
I have generally avoided insurance where possible, as you say, so you couldn't accuse me of being an insurance company shill ... it is my general distrust of insurers that leads me to believe that given a legal way of avoiding paying out on a policy, they will do so; others in this thread have already explained how exactly that has happened. Further, should that happen you then run the secondary risk of being prosecuted for driving without insurance AND for the insurer pursuing you, the policy holder, for all costs incurred by them in settling the claim.
I am not so sure you understand this bit ... perhaps because you generally assume it won't happen and thus don't consider the "what ifs" ... imagine a 100K claim for personal injury (plus legal costs) being laid at your door, with the lawyers on tap to back up that claim - simply the cost of defending it might bankrupt you, let alone the cost of actually losing!
So, if the difference between the named driver approach and the own policy approach is 5,000 quid, I can see why people would go down the named driver route, but when it is 1,000 for the first year and less each subsequent year, I think it is much harder to justify, considering the overall costs of motoring.
Sendmyusername, NCB isn't worth the paper it's written on and you should not waste your money on protecting it. In general simply having a claim free record (and being old enough to be dull and not having your car parked in down town Beirut) will give you the position you need to get a reasonable price on second/third cars regardless of whether you strictly have the NCB or not - I've found some insurers will simply match the NCB; others won't but will still give you a very similar price. Play around with the meerkat site pretending to have no NCB, but declare no previous accidents/points/medical issues and you might well be surprised what happens to the price as you go from 0,1,2..20 years NCB.
Of course if you're a young whipper snapper with 2 write offs and 9 points and are trying to insure a left hand drive imported EvoIV with 450BHP big turbo upgrade you will not get the same results ....
Cheers,
Robin
