[Rbrown]

My renewal due in New Year. We will see what it looks like.

Has anyone found having a tracker or Ghost fitted makes any difference to premiums? My feel is that it’s not worth the outlay for potential reductions in premium.

Thanks in advance

[Pentland]

Originally Posted by Rbrown

My renewal due in New Year. We will see what it looks like.

Has anyone found having a tracker or Ghost fitted makes any difference to premiums? My feel is that it’s not worth the outlay for potential reductions in premium.

Thanks in advance

I don’t have Ghost but have read on these forums that insurers don’t like it because it’s a mod to the wiring loom and not Thacham approved.
I cant imagine you’d recouped the costs through a reduction in insurance very quickly.

[TurboWeasel]

Originally Posted by Rbrown

Has anyone found having a tracker or Ghost fitted makes any difference to premiums?

My Ghost 2 did precisely zero to my premium. I'm with LV=.

As above, vehicle manufacturers don't approve of them because they jack into the CAN network and can cause issues, and insurers don't seem to care about them.

I disabled mine as it was more faff than it was worth.

[Somebloke]

Try BMW Flex. LV wanted 72% increase. BMW Flex was the cheapest for me, who are underwritten by LV!

[Bianchi Dave]

Just did our renewals yesterday, though not due til 6 Dec. As already said, it pays to start getting quotes early as they do fluctuate. From reading a few PH threads, it seems the best quotes can be had between around 30 days and 21 days out.

Our renewal for Admiral multicar was coming in at £855, up around £350 on last year iirc.

Managed to get my M340i (with cosmetic mods) for £446 with Aviva and her Mini Cooper Sport 2 for around £220 with Churchill, so £666 all in. Not too bad when we need business cover for both.

That was from different comparison sites, M340 from Money Supermarket and Mini from Confused.com so worth checking all the sites as they do differ.

I had to phone Churchill to clarify something and the guy openly said their best deals are through Confused.com.

Multicar discounts with any of the big insurers were all high quotes, some even more than Admiral's renewal. Its also clear certain insurers really don't like certain cars. Some of the quotes for my car were eye watering, but found strangely high quotes for the Mini too.

To be fair to Admiral I did phone up to see what they could do and they knocked around £75 off but they were still too high for me to consider staying. Bloody annoying when they don't just provide the best quote to begin with though.

Going back to the quote dates, I ran the first ones at 30 days out and on doing them again yesterday (20 days out) found the M340 had increased by about £40, and the Mini by about £20.

However I had saved my initial quotes from 30 days out which were honoured, so try to get quotes as soon as possible, and make sure you save them

[TurboWeasel]

Originally Posted by Somebloke

Try BMW Flex. LV wanted 72% increase. BMW Flex was the cheapest for me, who are underwritten by LV!

Interesting! They quoted £1200 for my 2016 330d, which is double what LV= are currently charging me (expires in March 24)

I just did a quick Compare the Market search, LV= refused to quote

FFS. I think I'll end up SORN'ing it and using the Golf TDI instead at this rate Some of the quotes were as high as £3500!

[kzg1969]

Originally Posted by Rbrown

Has anyone found having a tracker or Ghost fitted makes any difference to premiums? My feel is that it’s not worth the outlay for potential reductions in premium.

When i first got mine, a good few ins. co. wanted a tracker fitted (+£500 iirc) but the usual searching around found someone who would insure for less without one (Saga in my case!).

So, tracker for cheapness? no
If it was a rare car, maybe.....

[JD6]

I’ve heard quite a few people say they’re not going to voluntarily get a tracker as if it’s stolen and potentially driven badly, they don’t want it back. Seemed a reasonable position. I’ve only once had a tracker fitted - in 2001 to a new E39 M5 which I parked on the street in London. That was a requirement of most insurers at the time and reduced the premium by around £1k to £1700 from memory. An X5 I bought as a one year old AUC also had one already fitted although I don’t think it made much difference to the £300 odd premium.

Recently a friend voluntarily had a tracker fitted to his Alpina. Apparently when higher value cars are stolen, they tend to park them up on a quiet street away from their address for 24/48 hours to discover if the car has a tracker. If it has, it’ll get picked up. If it’s still there after that time, they assume they’re safe and the car has no tracker. It has changed my mind about having one fitted to a higher value car.

[SkyJawa]

Just hide an AirTag in the car

[RobUK]

Originally Posted by Somebloke

Try BMW Flex. LV wanted 72% increase. BMW Flex was the cheapest for me, who are underwritten by LV!

I'm with LV. Tried BMW Flex but unfortunately, they declined to quote because the MPPSK is not a 'standard fit'

[cramsnik]

Originally Posted by SkyJawa

Just hide an AirTag in the car

If you do this you can disable the noise they make to avoid them alerting the wrong people, vids on youtube ....takes a few mins.

[JD6]

Originally Posted by RobUK

I'm with LV. Tried BMW Flex but unfortunately, they declined to quote because the MPPSK is not a 'standard fit'

That sounds very strange - they really should cover their own approved mods. I’m pretty sure they used to be fine with MPPK as it was called for the 30d and 20d engines.

[AlwynMike]

Originally Posted by JD6

That sounds very strange - they really should cover their own approved mods. I’m pretty sure they used to be fine with MPPK as it was called for the 30d and 20d engines.

And you have to go all the way through the quote, including contact details etc before you get rejected, even though the "Modifications" question is one of the first to be asked.

Just done a Flex quote for my brother's M340i....nearly £400 dearer than the Meerkat cheapest and £250 dearer than Direct Line renewal.

[JD6]

Originally Posted by AlwynMike

And you have to go all the way through the quote, including contact details etc before you get rejected, even though the "Modifications" question is one of the first to be asked.

Just done a Flex quote for my brother's M340i....nearly £400 dearer than the Meerkat cheapest and £250 dearer than Direct Line renewal.

That’s a real pain to make you go through the whole thing and then decline. For me BMW Flex used to be expensive back in 2020 - it was a little over £500 when I could insure my last 840i for £330 ish elsewhere. Jump forward 3 years and Flex is now £575 and the cheapest of the pack.

[Watsey]

Howden (formerly A-Plan) called me today. Usual "the market, blah, blah,...", went through the normal checklist (zero changes in the mods to the car), no points on licence, no claims in the past year, protected NCD (yes, I know it makes fuck all difference ion terms of controlling the premium), etc.

Quoted premium has increased by £200 to £856, around 30% up.

Current policy doesn't expire until mid-Dec so now I'll start shopping around. There's only a handful of brokers that will quote for a significantly modified car, but it's worth making a few calls.

EDIT - I did a quick calculation. Based on my 4K miles per year insurance now costs more per mile than the fuel : 21ppm versus 19ppm.

[Alscoob]

Originally Posted by JD6

For me BMW Flex used to be expensive back in 2020 - it was a little over £500 when I could insure my last 840i for £330 ish elsewhere. Jump forward 3 years and Flex is now £575 and the cheapest of the pack.

Blimey that's cheap!

I did Flex as a stop gap while I was researching renewals, it came in at £98/month so a lot more than your £575. Was on my 540ix touring so would guess a similar insurance group. Have clean licence, 10+yrs NCB, 12k miles PA, legal & protected bonus cover and I'm old enough living in a low crime rate area.

Ended up going with Chris Knott at £620 ish all in.

[isleaiw1]

Originally Posted by Alscoob

Blimey that's cheap!

I did Flex as a stop gap while I was researching renewals, it came in at £98/month so a lot more than your £575. Was on my 540ix touring so would guess a similar insurance group. Have clean licence, 10+yrs NCB, 12k miles PA, legal & protected bonus cover and I'm old enough living in a low crime rate area.

Ended up going with Chris Knott at £620 ish all in.

as we all know, mileage and job description are important variables. I have a low risk job descriptor but it seems a high risk industry as I have to tick for licensed hospitality.... fact is I take the train to work so that is of zero relevance but definitely increases my premium!

However changing an 8 year old Mini Cooper 1.5 5 door to a 1 year old Mini JCW vert added the princely sum of £19 to my premium for the remaining 8 months - including admin fee

[Alscoob]

Originally Posted by Watsey

Howden (formerly A-Plan) called me today. Usual "the market, blah, blah,...", went through the normal checklist (zero changes in the mods to the car), no points on licence, no claims in the past year, protected NCD (yes, I know it makes fuck all difference ion terms of controlling the premium), etc.

Quoted premium has increased by £200 to £856, around 30% up.

Current policy doesn't expire until mid-Dec so now I'll start shopping around. There's only a handful of brokers that will quote for a significantly modified car, but it's worth making a few calls.

EDIT - I did a quick calculation. Based on my 4K miles per year insurance now costs more per mile than the fuel : 21ppm versus 19ppm.

Interesting as I had my 340i with a couple of mods with them (suspension, wheels, tyres) changed to the 540i said it had the same mods (as was going to add them) and they covered it from June to October as a replacement car, but come to renewal they wanted £2687.00 - KGM brokers wouldn't cover it anymore. Seems it was the 12K miles PA that was the issue, or was it that A-Plans changed to Howdens?

Guess your 4K PA makes a big difference then.

Try Chris Knott, at least you get to speak to someone who understands cars and is not just ticking boxes

[3-GT]

Current insurer - Adrian Flux

Cost last year - £486
Renewal quote - £1308
Online comparison - £622

No change of circumstances. I guess they no long want my custom . Been with them for over 7 years continuously and always found there renewal prices to be reasonable and in most cases lower than online comparison sites.

Will be giving them a ring but I'm not counting on it.

[AlwynMike]

As a small saving, if you get a policy that has Legal Expenses as an "extra", RAC do a standalone policy for £15 per year that covers up to £100k and has the usual helplines etc. Also covers home stuff too. And it's not car specific, so if you have multiple vehicles the "savings" mount.

[Alscoob]

Originally Posted by AlwynMike

As a small saving, if you get a policy that has Legal Expenses as an "extra", RAC do a standalone policy for £15 per year that covers up to £100k and has the usual helplines etc. Also covers home stuff too. And it's not car specific, so if you have multiple vehicles the "savings" mount.

My policy has legal cover and I asked them to remove it as I was going to do the RAC cover, they said they could not remove it as their policy is to include it for all & seeing as it wasn't too much more I didn't press the point.

Another way of reducing the premium is (althought they have all gone up as well) is to increase your excess voluntary contribution, you can then take out a 12 month excess insurance for not very much and likely save more as you have a greater excess payment.

[RobUK]

Originally Posted by JD6

That sounds very strange - they really should cover their own approved mods. I’m pretty sure they used to be fine with MPPK as it was called for the 30d and 20d engines.

Unfortunately, the MPPSK no longer falls within their "Additions not considered a Modification" list. Not sure if this is a recent thing, but what's interesting is that BMW Flex is underwritten by LV= who I'm currently insured with