Tag: van insurance

Cash for crash ruining van insurance rates?

Posted on by News Desk

Cash for crash scams are poised to absolutely ruin the van insurance industry, driving up rates for legitimate drivers – and one man has had enough.

In fact, a van hire firm owner from Bolton, Stuart Lever, has gone on the warpath in a major way. He was interviewed both on BBC Radio 5 Live and on the BBC Victoria Derbyshire news about this very subject. He’s on a quest to put cash for crash criminals on notice, especially since he and his company have been targeted in the past by these fraudsters.

In fact, Lever had to fit his rental vans with tracking tech in order to dispute fraud claims made against his company. He was able to walk away unscathed after the fraudster reported the made-up accident occurring at a location that his van simply wasn’t, based on the tracking data.

Still, the fact that he had to go to such lengths to stop fraudsters in their tracks makes the man’s blood boil, he said. Everyone thinks it’s just  big laugh when you rip off a car insurance or van insurance company, he remarked, but fraudulent claims ratchet up the premiums of companies that rely on fleet insurance – sometimes enough to drive them right out of business.

Thankfully, things have gotten better for Lever and his firm. Prior to fitting his fleet with the tracking technology, he would get something like four claims a year, but after catching the last fraudster in the act he hasn’t had one claim come across his desk. Still, he says that motor vehicle insurance fraud needs to be clamped down on by the police before other businesses succumb to the practice.

For what it’s worth, I can’t agree more with the bloke. When it comes down to running a company that relies upon a fleet of vans, cars, lorries, or whatever else you want to put on the road, having to field a barrage of cash for crash claims is more than just a headache – it’s a threat to your company’s survival. That’s not to say that insurers aren’t completely innocent either, but it’s obvious in this case that fraudsters have been making this small business owner’s life completely hellish for far too long.

For what it’s worth, I hope Lever’s message gets out over the airwaves loud and strong. Insurance fraud is horrid as it drives up premiums for people innocently targeted by it, and it’s already expensive enough to keep a motor vehicle on the road without having to worry that you’ll be a victim of it.

 

New EU ruling to make your insurance bill rocket upwards

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 4 APRIL 2015:

A recent ruling from the EU is set to make your insurance bills rocket upwards because – get this – you’ll need to insure your lawn mower believe it or not.

Put this one directly in the “I can’t believe this is actually happening” file, a 43 year old law has been dredged up by the European Union in order to make it a requirement to have insurance cover for motorised vehicles like lawn mowers, mobility scooters and motorised golf caddies.

If you thought that keeping your car insurance or van insurance paid was hard enough, now if you’ve got one of those vehicles in your garage or shed you’re going to have to shell out as much as an additional £100 a year. If you have more than one of these motorised vehicles you’re going to pay through the nose for sure.

Right now the Association of British Insurers and the Department for Transport are scrambling in an attempt to clarify which types of motorised vehicles will need to carry insurance cover and at what level. Most of these so-called ‘niche vehicles’ are exempt from being covered under UK law, but now with the EU’s new court decision this has thrown a major spanner in the work.

So what’s to blame for the new law? Well European courts decided in favour of Solvenian Damjian Vnuk who was struck by a tractor and fell from a ladder. The Brussels court said that any motorised vehicle whether or not on private or public land needed to be insured in order to provide compensation for blokes like Vnuk.

Do I blame Vnuk? Of course not. The poor man was struck by a bloody tractor. However I do blame whoever was driving that tractor, as he was obviously a complete and total pillock. Thanks so much for ruining it for the rest of us, you bastard! Now I’ve got to tell my grandmother we have to take her motorised scooter to the tip because we can’t afford it.

Just to make sure, my grandmum never actually collided with anyone to the point where she needed to be taken to court. That scooter does hurt awful when it rolls over your toes on Christmas morning, though.

Car and van insurance premiums poised to increase yet again

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 3 APRIL 2015:

Car insurance and van insurance premiums are poised to increase yet again thanks to a lack of competition between insurers, analysts say. Are we having fun yet?

According to some research from an insurance comparison site, the average premium price across every age group stood at £561.10 in February 2015. This is up by £21.90 from last year’s average – and once again the country’s youngest motorists are being hammered the hardest.

Whether it’s for a personal insurance policy or one for commercial van insurance, drivers under the age of 21 pay an average of more than £1,420. This is an increase of nearly £20 in and of itself from January to February – and it’s something close to 376 per cent higher than the under £300 someone between the ages of 50 and 64 would end up paying.

So what in the world is causing these insane increases? Well on a yearly basis December is usually the point in the year when competition drops to its lowest point. This recovers in both January and February, but bounce back in 2015 has been abysmal compared to years past – with lowered competition, insurance companies don’t really have any reason to provide good rates because well to hell with you if you’re a customer.

Believe it or not, many analysts say that dropping petrol prices naturally lead to premium increases as well. This seems patently unfair, as pain at the pump has been widespread for far too long and it’s nice to finally see a litre of petrol not costing you an arm and a leg when you pull in to your local garage, but insurers feel that cheaper petrol means drivers feel comfortable driving more since it’s no longer as expensive to fill the tank. More drivers on the road for longer leads to more potential accidents, so insurers hedge their bets against that. So much for that nice country drive this spring, eh?

 

 

Cracking down on drink driving the American way

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 20 MARCH 2015:

The Americans think they’ve sussed out how to crack down on drink driving in the United States – and surprisingly it doesn’t involve shooting anyone.

According to a report in Reuters, a new push towards fitting devices in new cars for sale in the US could possibly cut back on something like 85 per cent of alcohol related deaths. The new initiative could end up not only saving tens of thousands of lives, but it could also result in major savings in the form of injury-related costs and even car insurance or van insurance premiums.

So there’s no saying when or if such an initiative would make its way across the pond here, but the Yanks seem to think that fitting cars with alcohol interlocks is one of the best way to stop drink driving. In fact, the American Journal of Public Health thinks using brand-new tech to prevent cars and vans from being driven could stop more than 59,000 fatalities, more than one and a quarter million non-fatal injuries, and something like $340 billion in medical and court costs.

Fitting cars with interlocks after drink driving offence is a good way to keep people off the road that you know are miserable drunks, but it doesn’t do anything for those that fly under the radar – or for first offences. This is why the idea of making new interlock technology standard on new cars makes it a much better option in preventing drink driving completely – or at least much more effectively.

Honestly it sounds like a brilliant idea, especially if it’s adopted across all 50 states and not just a few here and there. If it proves effective, it could easily be brought across to other countries – and with drink driving a threat wherever you go and whoever you might be it’s probably not such a bad idea to get it over here in the UK. I don’t know about you but I know a few blokes that like to go down to their local and have a few pints in the evenings, only to attempt to motor home even though they’re three sheets to the wind, simply because they can’t be arsed to take public transport – or they think they can “handle it.”

Yes, well that’s all well and good until you get nicked for drink driving isn’t it? And you better hope you’re stopped by the police instead of wrapping yourself around a tree or striking some poor bicyclist or pedestrian.

£93 of your premium is the result of whiplash claims

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 13 MARCH 2015:

Wondering why your van insurance or car insurance is so high? Around £93 worth of it is a result of the number of whiplash claims insurers have to deal with.

So why in the world is the amount of whiplash claims raising everyone’s insurance by an average of £93 lately? Well that’s just how many claims that car and commercial van insurance providers have had to deal with lately. Apparently there’s been an absolutely massive spike in volume recently, and insurers say the costs they incur in paying out for all these supposed whiplash injuries.

Insurers of course are pointing the finger at ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyers that are drumming up spurious claims in order to benefit from court costs and lawyer fees. If only there were some way to limit the impact of whiplash claims, insurance companies have been whinging – or at least that’s what they say whenever they’re not accusing the Government from doing enough to crack down on insurance fraud.

Meanwhile who loses out in the long run? We do, of course – every single one of us who has to keep their van or lorry insured. The so-called £2.5 billion a year that insurers say whiplash claims cost them gets passed on right to everyone who has to climb behind a wheel – and our personal share is £93. It’s enough to drive you absolutely mad – especially when there’s so much else to worry about.

Still, there’s not much we can do about it, is there? We have to make sure our vehicles stay insured at all times or we’re liable for all sorts of fixed penalties. And good luck getting cover from an insurer if they know you like motoring about without insurance! No, we’re all kind of over a barrel here – we’re stuck having to play by the industry’s rules. Honestly the best we can do is just shop around every year when it comes time to renew our cover and try our best to find a reasonably priced premium policy that doesn’t offer cut-rate cover or leave us with having to take out a mortgage on our flat to pay for it.

I wish I was exaggerating for comedic effect but sometimes I really wonder; don’t you?

 

Google gets into the insurance comparison business

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 6 MARCH 2015:

Well here’s something that certainly took long enough: Internet giant Google has finally poked its head into the car and van insurance comparison business.

Using a comparison site to look into getting discount insurance is nothing new here in the UK of course, as you can’t swing a cat without hitting an aggregator site that promises to pull quotes from tens of insurers all at once so you don’t have to do it on your own the old-fashioned way. Apparently though it’s not the same across the pond, as the United States doesn’t really have anything similar for their own personal or commercial van insurance needs. This is likely because each US state, from Alabama to Washington, all have different insurance laws that aren’t interchangeable.

Still, nothing was necessarily preventing a firm from setting up a comparison website on a state-by-state basis, and this is exactly what Google has done. Its new Google Compare service is focused on its home state of California for now, but the firm promises to expand its offerings to additional states down the road; the service works more or less identically to a comparison site here at home, with the added benefit that it’s not actually owned by an insurance company itself.

Honestly if Google wanted to get into the insurance comparison business, it should have started over here in the UK. We could always use more competition, especially considering how rates seem to be heading up once again. Still, it’s nice to think that we were ahead of those bloody colonists for once, though I suppose it was only a matter of time before those enterprising little bastards caught up to us.

Still, we did it first – we can at least rest assured that we have the top spot there. We also don’t have to renew our cover twice a year like most Americans do either – could you believe that most insurance policies in the US need to be renewed every six months? Not only that, but almost all Americans prefer to pay their premiums on instalment instead of all at once – don’t they know that it’s more expensive to do it that way?

Well, they wanted to be their own country. I’m washing my hands of the whole thing.

Don’t trust that white van man – could be the cops!

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 27 FEB 2015:

If you think you’re safe on the streets surrounded by your fellow white van men, think again – the cops are using vans and HGVs to spy on motorists.

Think it sounds like something out of a poorly written spy novel? Think again – police are outfitting ‘spy trucks’ in the form of heavy goods vehicles and vans in order to keep an eye out for mobile phone offences like texting or making calls. Being caught red-handed can lead to heavy fines – and in some cases, a nasty surprise when you go to renew your commercial van insurance at the end of the year.

That’s right, you heard it here first: car insurance and van insurance providers have always been keen to charge you as much as they possibly could and will use any excuse to do it, but in some instances an insurer may decide you’re just too much of a risk. This could be the fate of any motorists nicked by one of these undercover lorries; with individuals who text and drive being bloody menaces on the road because they’re so distracted, more and more insurers are flatly refusing to insure any of these lunatics at all, let alone charge them miserably high premium prices.

On the one hand I’m all for punishing idiotic drivers who think they’re special and that the laws don’t apply to them when it comes to careless driving. I can’t even imagine how many lives might be saved by stopping these bastards in their tracks. At the same time it does seem a little overreaching to use vans and lorries as high vantage points to spot anyone thumbing through their mobile phones whilst sitting in traffic.

Honestly though, if it makes the roads safer I can’t really argue with it. All I can do is offer the warning to anyone out there who thinks they can get away with it. Turns out you won’t be able to, so don’t even try. For pity’s sake, if you need to send a text that badly pull over on the side of the roadway and let the rest of us get to work without risking death.

ABI says Gov’t needs to o more to bring down insurance costs

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 20 FEB 2015:

The Association of British Insurers says that the Government simply isn’t doing enough to bring down the costs of car insurance and van insurance for Brits.

Britons have had it up to here with high insurance premiums, the ABI said recently, and it has pointed the finger squarely at the Government for neglecting to move forward on reforms that would have aided the industry in bringing down the cost of insurance for everyone. When it comes to issues like unresolved reforms on the small claims track limit and the driving licensing regime, ABI director of general insurance policy James Dalton said that more has to be done to strip away unnecessary costs that are limiting the market. Doing so will help bring down insurance premiums, especially for younger drivers, Dalton added.

Premiums for both personal car insurance and commercial van insurance would plummet if the Government would increase the small claims track limit, the ABI says. Meanwhile a lack of the Government moving forward on changing testing and training for young drivers is making the roads more dangerous than they have to be, jeopardising the lives of younger motorists, and keeping their costs astronomically high, Dalton also said. A graduated driving licence regime would likely go a long way to resolve such issues, the ABI director said.

While the reforms to how younger drivers are taught to act behind the wheel is likely a help – especially if this ends up dropping the costs of their insurance as a result – I’m not quite as convinced about the small claims track limit. I’m sure it will help insurers keep their costs down, as more car insurance claims will go through the small claims system instead of being dealt with by high-powered and expensive solicitors, I also have a sneaking suspicion that this could deny access to justice for those who need it most – those injured in car accidents. Just how high the cap would be raised is one of those things that could make or break such an initiative, if you ask me.

I suppose we’ll see if the Government responds to the ABI’s criticism. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you, though.

Company car drivers beware: your personal cover is at risk

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 13 FEB 2015:

If you drive a car or a van owned by your company, you need to be careful that you don’t jeopardise the personal cover on your own private vehicle.

Apparently it’s a pretty big problem right now according to the Asset Protection Unit. THe anti-fraud unit that works with the car insurance and van insurance company in order to investigate claims has discovered that there are shedloads of drivers accepting blame when they’re actually in the wrong – with the result that corporate and fleet van insurance premiums are creeping upwards.

The biggest pitfall, according to the APU, is that company drivers think that they can simply accept fault for an accident falsely or prematurely without having to worry about their own personal no claims bonus. Unfortunately you’re more or less shooting yourself in the foot at this point; accepting liability on a corporate or fleet policy will almost certianly be reflected on your private insurance – and you’re going to be in for a nasty shock once you renew your personal cover, believe me!

Now, some of this is just ignorance. If you don’t know that taking responsibility for a crash in a corporate owned van or car is going to impact your private cover, you’re obviously going to be more likely to do so. However, the APU says that there’s been more than one incident they’ve investigated that it turns out the driver accepted liability in order to receive a ‘cash incentive’ in the anti-fraud unit’s words.

Now, I don’t know about you but when I hear the words ‘cash incentive’ I think ‘bribe’. Or possibly ‘insurance fraud.’ It wouldn’t surprise me to think that there are some particularly stupid criminal gangs out there engaging in crash for cash schemes with corporate or fleet vehicles, especially if they’re labouring under the false assumption that their private cover is safe from scrutiny. It’s situations like this that just make me laugh and rub my hands together in glee, knowing that the majority of these daft idiots will get caught and will almost inevitably have the book thrown at them – and that they’ll be ruining their own chances of getting cheap private cover for themselves all at the same time.

Careful: your insurer might just hate Jesus

Posted on by News Desk

VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 6 FEB 2015:

In news that will almost certainly make your head spin like a girl possessed by the Devil, one car insurance company threatened a vicar for being Christian.

All right, it’s a tiny bit more complex an issue than that. Honestly though it does kind of boil down to just this: Age UK, who insures Rev Wena Parry’s Vauxhall Zafira, told her that the pro-Jesus stickers she has on her car could be counted as modifications – and that not informing the insurer that these ‘modifications’ were made could lead to her insurance cover being invalidated.

All right, so let’s address this, shall we? The whole idea behind telling your car or van insurance company that you’ve made modifications to your vehicle is to make sure that your policy reflects the condition of your car. Boy racers installing spoilers and turbochargers on their cars are obviously going to be engaging in risky behaviours that need to be reflected in a higher insurance premium, and having anti-theft systems like immobilisers fitted to your vehicle change likewise change your vehicle’s value to an insurer as well. All of these reasons are absolutely valid ones.

Having two pro-Jesus stickers on your car, however, do not do the same thing as increasing your vehicle’s performance or make it harder to steal or break into. I simply fail to see how having stickers that read “Christ for me” and “Christ must be Saviour” are out of place on the car of a vicar. Rev Parry make it to Heaven quicker in her sticker-adorned car? Will the stickers make it harder for demons and devils to possess her engine block? I don’t understand, and I don’t think I ever will.

Rev Parry thinks its discrimination against Christians. That could be the case, there’s no denying that. However, I think the more likely culprit is that there are pillocks working at Age UK that wouldn’t know their arse from a hole in the ground. Corporate stupidity certainly transcends all faiths and religions – you certainly don’t have to be an idiot to work for one of those companies, but based on this instance it looks like it certainly can’t hurt.

 

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