Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 7 March 2014:
I’ve been saying for years how car insurance and van insurance companies don’t respect their customers, but now there’s even more evidence proving me right.
In fact, not even celebrities are free from the all-encompassing grasp of vehicle insurers, as a new interview with James Purefoy just revealed this week. Purefoy, star of film and television that’s best known for his riveting performance as Mark Anthony on ‘Rome,’ said his insurer actually rang him up to inform him his rates were being hiked – and all because he was in a relationship with another celebrity at the time.
Some time ago, Purefoy was romantically involved with fellow star Gwyneth Paltrow, and while the relationship has since ended – on good terms – the aftermath of if lingers on in his insurance premiums. Purefoy ruefully recounted a tale how a particularly diligent insurance employee rang him up after seeing a picture of him and Paltrow in his car, and informed him that his rates were going up by £500. I didn’t know that dating a celebrity made you a worse driver, but apparently it does! Either way the insurer made an additional 500 quid out of the deal.
Of course if insurers treat celebrities this way, imagine how they treat the white van man that lives down the street from you. That’s right: insurers see us as little more than vast pinatas they can just keep hitting until we split open and rain money down on them, and insurers are making a mint. To prove my point massive insurance group Admiral just announced its 2013 pre-tax profits have gone up by 7 per cent from the previous year’s to a jaw-dropping £370 million. That’s not revenue – that’s profits.
So where’s that money coming from? Well where do you think? It’s people like us that get raked over the coals, simply because we have no choice if we want to keep our vehicles on the road legally. Personal and commercial van insurance providers have us all over a barrel, and even as insurers pat themselves on the back for ‘reducing insurance costs’ – evidenced by market surveys that are ever skewed in their favour. It’s enough to make you sell your car and just walk everywhere. Good luck doing that if you don’t have public transport links in your region!
