It’s the peak time of year for car insurance renewals. Deputy editor Felicity King-Evans dispels 10 common insurance myths to ensure you get the best deal at the best price…

Click here to read Felicity's article

Number 8 is incorrectish.

In actual fact there are very very few policies that stipulate that the driving other cars cover is subject to the other car being insured.

Hi Dacouch,

Thanks! I phoned the ABI and you're right, policies now read that you have to have the owner's permission, not the other policyholder's permission, so you're bang on. I will edit the article before our Rate Alert email goes out on Monday.

The vehicle would still need to be taxed and to be taxed, it would usually still have cover - unless it's lapsed, I suppose.

Interestingly, the ABI also stated that some insurers have withdrawn this from their policies because it's being abused.

Apparently (and I did not know this), it's designed to allow you to drive someone's car in an emergency rather than let you hop behind the wheel of your friend's Porsche for kicks. My policy certainly doesn't make that clear, I wonder how widespread that information is?

Felicity

There are a few companies that insist the other vehicle must be insured.

Incidently Insurance Policies do not generally stipulate that the other vehicle or even your own has to be taxed. If your pointing this out it is worth noting that if the other car you are driving is not insured then it will not appear on the MIB database so there is a good chance the police will pull you over

A loyt of Insurers tend to stipulate that your own vehicle eg the one on your policy is in a roadworthy condition and / or has not been written off. The idea being to try and prevent people from insuring a wreck so they can drive another vehicle under the DOC extension.

It might also be worth noting in your email that the Driving Other Cars extension normally only applies to the policyholder as a surprising amount of people assume that as a named driver they can use this extension

I cant believe you havent put the 'its cheaper with one person on policy' myth (if there is such a one).

Putting my better half on the policy reduced it by 25% for me.

Slim

Hi Slim,

You're right, it can make an incredible difference.

My premiums are quite high (crashing a parent's new BMW a couple of weeks after you take your test is apparently frowned upon...) but adding my other half as a named driver brought the cost down considerably.

I'm sure there are statistical reasons, but more cover for less cash seems bizarre to me. Like our recent research that shows third party isn't always cheapest, it all seems so upside down!

Felicity

Single people tend to have more claims than married or people with partners hence the reduction in premium with some (Not all) Insurers.

As a general rule of thum limiting the driving to one driver would reduce the premium for a lot of people

Number 2 isn't fully representative is it?

There is no mention of the fact that some, if not all comparison sites receive commission from the insurers for each referal, which is the common understanding (not just that the customer pays commission).

There is also no mention of the fact that many competitive and successful insurers (direct line, et al) refuse to allow 'middle-men' (price comparison sites) to list their products. So much so, customers often save money from going direct to these companies that are NOT listed on price comparison sites.
(I am clearly not saying customers cannot and do not save money with comparison sites in situations outside of what I describe)

Not only do insurers such as direct line say this themselves, but I (and many others) have also gotten cheaper quotes with good cover from going direct to insurers that are not listed on price comparison sites.

A good point DarkhorseDre, I'm not sure the owners of the forum who are a comparison site will be pleased though...

Ha! Yes, I can imagine!

However my aim is not to upset anybody, just to ensure completeness in these articles, as none of us (including journalists I'm sure) want to mislead or be misled by small omissions like this!

Thanks for the comments, DarkHorseDre.

Obviously, I can only talk about moneysupermarket.com, not other price comparison sites.

- The first thing to say is we don’t add any extra commission or charge to the price you would see if you went direct to an insurer’s website. The price you see on our site should, all other things being equal, be the same as going direct.

- Of course we do get paid by insurers if you buy a policy via us. Insurers treat this as a “marketing” cost. It may cost insurers £xxx to get a new customer via TV advertising, £yyy via direct mail or advertising and £zzz via a price comparison site. Most insurers tell us that acquiring customers via a price comparison website is still very cost effective compared with doing so via TV advertising, for example.

- We’d love to compare every insurer – and for car insurance today we compare 117 prices, which is more than any other price comparison website and is increasing almost weekly (we added Santander and Elephant last week for example). As you say, there are some insurers who refuse to allow us to compare them – Direct Line is one of those. We list those companies on our site here, in the interests of transparency.

- When you get your insurance renewal quote, a few minutes spent on our site will get you up to 117 quotes to compare – and something like 97% of people find that we save them money on their renewal – with the average being £157. Of course, if you have the time and the inclination you may be able to save more by running extra quotes on the sites that we don’t compare. The choice is yours!

As an aside, unlike some other price comparison websites we are independent – we are not owned or funded by an insurer.

I hope that helps.

Thanks for the reply Graeme.

However, I think you may have missed my point: I was not attacking Moneysupermarket.com, on the contrary I read the articles within the newsletter and compare products when I need to, but with an open-mind of course! The point was that I, like other posters, identified omissions in the original article.

Whilst the defensive reply was factual and detailed, I notice that the original article was not updated with this information that tells consumers that going direct can still save them money (as the insurer does not spend that extra 'marketing' money, etc) and the other things you seem to agree with me on. This is the only point of my post and I believe it is valid.

Oh, and btw: People who spend the time on comparison sites, typically do have the inclination to visit another site IF they know it will save them money (the people who do not are the ones whom renew with the same insurer! Or, the few who use comparison sites and nothing else.. but is that because they are led to believe that is the only way?)

This article was supposed to dispel myths, and I was trying to help you all achieve that!

Thanks Dre – appreciate the help. You seem to know a lot about motor insurance and why people come to comparison sites.

We’ll have to agree to disagree. I don’t think that was the point being made in the article. However, rest assured, I’ll mention it to the team.

Thanks again.