Admiral Multi-Car - is there any financial benefit?

[gobiman]

Just back from holiday and had the new quote from Admiral for my 3 cars (4.8is, Merc CLK500 and Kia Picanto).
It had gone up from £1600 to over £2200!! I had meant to shop around last year but didn't get round to it. However this year the 37% rise (with no change in cars or circumstances + cars less valuable and some speeding points now 4 rather than 3 years old) forced me to get busy. To cut a long story short, I have been able to insure them all seperately for just under £1000 (AXA for 2 and MoreThan for 1). Admiral would only get to £1400 when challenged.
Conclusions -
1. As with most policies, they simply apply a large increase at the end of the year and rely on inertia/laziness from the punter. This seems to be standard practice for all bar a few operators.
2. Very sceptical about the financial benefits of "multi- car". The only benefit seems to be convenience for which you pay handsomely and the suggestion that you benefit (as opposed to them) from more than one car is pretty marginal. It is all really marketing spin in my view.
3. The fact that Admiral came down to £1400 shows just how imperfect the market is.
4. There is no substitute (unfortunately) for doing the legwork every year to get the best deal.
This will not surprise most of you but thought I would share it.

[X5Sport]

Very useful.  I took all of our cars off Admiral last year because they refused to insure one car that was SORN'd and whacked up the policy, and then had the cheek to say that no one did 'lay up' insurance in the UK.  I got the insurance with no problems at all and by moving the cars to separate policies saved several hundred pounds - same as you.

Richard

[Denis O]

I've always thought that Multi Car policies were a con. Once they suck you in, with say 3 or 4 cars, they've got you and it's too much ag to unravel things.

Most insurers charge different premiums for the same cars so why would anyone think that Admiral will be cheapest for every car. Put the X5 into a search engine and you'll get quotes from £300 to £3000. Put a Z4 into the same search engine and you'll get a similar discrepency but with totally different companies.

It's a bit like protected no claims. They are designed to keep you with the same insurer continuously. You have a fault accident and you lose 2 years NCB. If you have NCB protected you keep max bonus but they hike your base premium to cover the 2 years so still end up charging you. If you go somewhere else you can't transfer the protected NCB so you start with 2 years loss. So you've paid extra for protection which is not saving you anything.

The same principle of companys charging different premiums for different cars also applies here. Because company A were cheap last year for your X5 doesn't mean they will be this year. X5's had a bad accident record with company A during the year so they hike premiums accordingly. You've had an accident so they hike your premium. You've still got maximum NCD but the premium is now 3 times what i was last year. You're stuffed.

Best thing to do is use a search engine, each year and use the cheapest you can find. The sheds are all much of a muchness when it comes to claim handling so you might as well go for price than pay more and still put up with crap customer service and claim handling.

I read somewhere recently that there are only 3 companies underwriting UK car insurance. The rest of it's all smoke and mirrors and you buy into which brand is cheap at the time.

[markda]

There would have to be a significant benefit for me to bother again, tried once.  It seemed like a great deal at the time, but then when we changed one of the cars they weren't competitive and there was very little I could do without a huge upheaval.  Not for me.

[shadrack]

deffo seems like a con really

[markda]

Con might be a bit strong, it's not very flexible!

[gmc15]

I had 3 cars insured with Admiral on a multi policy. The main advantage was that my 19 year old son got a really good price for his car. As above, when the policy was due for renewal, all the prices had gone up a lot. I shopped around and moved 2 cars to other companies. When I used a search engine for my sons car Admiral came up cheapest. When I phoned them they honoured the price and he got his insurance quite a bit cheaper than the previous year.
We all managed to get cheaper insurance by doing a bit of searching

[pvr]

When I spoke to them at renewal time, they applied "loyalty discount" to all policies (have 5 cars with them), which knocked about £700 off in total.

They sure rely on people just renewing automatically as otherwise they would apply that discount automatically.

Can't believe my M was only £180 to insure though with them.

[Pope]

I reckon these multi vehicle policies are a complete rip-off.

For years i've had multi-bike insurance for my 2 bikes, thinking its the cheapest way.
So, i got this years renewal through, and though i'd do a comparison with insuring my bikes separately.

WTF...The difference was, a £450 saving over the multi-policy...

And a multi vehicle policy (2 bikes 1 car) would have cost me an extra £700...

WTF is all that about.. :blink:

[zchap68]

I have been with Admiral for just over 10 years and I have found them to be the cheapest to insure three vehicles compared to alot of other companies especially with the MultiCar discounts.

However, some words of caution:
1) They charge an 'admin' fee almost everytime you make a change to your policy, eg. changing number plates, swapping vehicles etc. which is ridiculous considering all my documentation is online.
2) they will deduct some of the multi-car discount if you remove a vehicle of the policy (fair enough I suppose...)
3) Even if you report an incident but didn't make a claim, your premium will be increased the following year. I informed them that my stereo was stolen but decided not to claim as the excess was similar in value to the stereo. Following year my premium was increased... rang back and enquired as to why it had increased... they curtly replied that I was now deemed higher risk as an incident had occurred.  :blink:
4. Even if you have no claims discount, if you had an accident (whether your fault or not), your premium will likely increase again due to the system determining you as slightly higher risk.

I only remain with Admiral because touch wood I haven;t had any accidents and they remain the cheapest, but each year I have to ring up and haggle down the renewal premium and would easily jump ship if another insurance company offered a cheaper rate.

[535dboy]

[quote="pvr"]
When I spoke to them at renewal time, they applied "loyalty discount" to all policies (have 5 cars with them), which knocked about £700 off in total.

They sure rely on people just renewing automatically as otherwise they would apply that discount automatically.

Can't believe my M was only £180 to insure though with them.
[/quote]

That is because it is only worth about £11.75 and doesn't have enough power to cause any damage

Never been tempted by admiral as I too was concerned about the unravelling effect and when the kids were at home what would happen if they had an accident on my policy.

They also didn't like the lotus as it was too modified

[pvr]

You sure they just did not like you because you are a tosser?  )

[535dboy]

[quote="pvr"]
You sure they just did not like you because you are a tosser?  )
[/quote]

Reported to moderator.

[pvr]

Denied. 

We will sort it out outside the next Christmas meal (assuming it is not raining)  )

[535dboy]

[quote="pvr"]
Denied. 

We will sort it out outside the next Christmas meal (assuming it is not raining)  )
[/quote]

) ) )

Wouldn't want the other two getting their hair wet trying to break us up would we!