Glad you've got it sorted, always a pain when it comes to renewal time. My personal favourite quote for my 999...Considering it was around £250 in the end... Maybe if they had thrown in breakdown cover I would of paid the extra.
I insure my excess ( £2k) on a separate policy , costs about £35 I think , Ive done it for a couple of years now.
I've flipped between Ducati Insurance, Carol Nash, Bennets and back to Ducati Insurance over the last few years. I find if you move away from someone then their quote is a lot better when you ask them the next year.
Wow. I'd avoid 'Right Choice' like the plague. First they signed me up with a competitive quote and then called me a couple of days later to tell me that the premium was wrong and I had to pay extra, although with the extra amount it still was a bit cheaper than the next highest quote, so I went along with it. It was only when I received the paperwork a couple of days later that I discovered that my bike wasn't insured for theft outside my house, only from inside my garage, and I decided I wasn't happy with the level of risk they were (were not) covering. I promptly cancelled the policy and placed the business with RAC but Right Choice tried to stiff me with the most obscene admin charges which was effectively half the premium for a few days cover. I contested the amount being charged and also pointed out their "sharp practice" and refused to allow them to retain the amount they wanted. I made the suggestion of a alternative charge based on a reasonable admin fee, plus a pro-rata sum for the few days that I was "on risk", a figure which they never actually disputed, but they certainly didn't refund the amount until I threatened legal action, couple with extra "legal fees, out of pocket expenses and loss of earnings" if I had to attend court, after which they promptly paid up. Right Choice are absolute shysters and if you do a search on them you'll find lots of complaints on websites like Money Saving Expert, et al. Lots of them complaining about the same sharp practice of undercharging and demanding top-up fees later once the insurance was in place. I'm amazed the ombudsman hasn't investigated them. You're absolutely right. I can tolerate slight increase and last year my RAC renewal went up about £20. I figured that it wasn't worth my time to shop around just let it renew. This year their renewal quote was still competitive, but I just couldn't get my head around them wanting an additional £600 to change the vehicle for the exact same thing with just one digit difference in the model number. The girl at DMC (who I've now signed up with) explained that it could just be a value threshold that's been crossed which is triggering the higher premium, what with the new bike price rises that we've seen across the board over the last year. Personally, I think you should get off the fence and tell us what you really think. Enough with the ambiguity.
Thanks to this thread, and El Toro's suggestion, I have insured through DNC/Principal. On the phone Motorcycle Direct reduced their quote to £292, down £40, but still up £60 over last year and no explanation for the increase. DMC offered better cover (less excess) for £219 so I took that and added UK and European breakdown for £65, as I needed European recovery anyway. So very happy to get much better cover and still pay less.
I’ve stuck with Carole Nash the last few years. My renewal last year was cheaper than the current policy, that’s never happened before. I also have a laid up policy on my 916 Strada which costs £60. I don’t think I could afford or even consider paying for a multi bike policy which would be £600 ish, bloody rip off for a 54 year old with max no claims, garaged etc etc...
It depends how many bikes you have as to wether it is worth it or not . I have 2 big bikes and a highly modified monkey bike and a 2 stroke japanese import . All 4 bikes together fully comp were £357.00 before i was knocked off my bike last year. To give you an idea ,i once tried insuring the monkey bike on its own and was quoted over £900 . The multi bike policy just takes highest insurance grouped bike and adds the others on .
I did. You have a 2k excess, and you pay another 30 odd quid to offset that again. So there is an excess....
Agreed, you might be able to claim it back it you had a no-fault claim, but if you lost your bike to fire or theft you wouldn't. So same applies regardless of how much excess you've paid. That said I suspect that in the event of a no-fault claim you'd have a hard time trying to claim back the fee you paid to offset your excess, particularly if it's lumped in with your premium. Because you've paid it up-front it's hard to define it as an "out of pocket" expense as a result of the claim, as it's a fee you would have paid regardless of whether you'd made a claim or not. Also, not all "excess offset" policy features or stand-alone products cover the full amount of the excess - only a portion of it. So if you've got to chase to recover £300 of excess or £1500, the amount of effort is about the same. I think they're of limited value and just help to gloss over the crippling excess that would normally result in you going off to another insurer.
Well although I'm definitely going to give DMC a call, to be fair to MCE, after a detailed conversation with one of their team, who was incredibly helpful, I've been able to establish a quite reasonable, if still irritating quotation to change to a 1260. It did take quite some time to establish that the key issue is that most insurers don't have the model set-up on their systems yet, so they need to do what they call a 'manual quote', which in my recent experience means they short-cut the assessment and often make outlandish recommendations about pricing to change. When I went through the rationale properly as to the specification differences between my 2014 Pikes Peak, quite heavily modded and the potential 1260MTS, the insurers representative went back into the system and carried-out a re-quote on my two-bike policy, which resulted in circa £100 to change. Perseverance, persistence, and a degree of accuracy to help the insurance personnel understand and appreciate the key 'real-time' differences between one bike and another, seems to have paid off. However, it's clearly going to be a while before the insurance underwriters actually 'get' what the 1260 is all about, until they do, we will end up paying more for what ought to be a simple amendment. That said, underwriters have always taken advantage of such changes, so why would they alter their approach, when all it would be likely to do, is make them less money off of mugs like us! Too much still in my mind, however, much more realistic when considering the change options. SO, a new 1260 MTS could be getting ordered early next week, ready for a 2018 plate change. Watch this space, as there could be another RED machine, coz that's Duc-Bird's fave colour, on it's way onto the forum
Many, many years ago when I was young and had long hair and badges on my jacket, I had the old Norwich Union Rider policy which covered me fully comp on my bikes (had five at the highest count, all on the road) and TPFT on any other bike; but theft cover on a bike that was not my own would only be valid if the bike was stolen while I was astride it. Sounds mad but made perfect sense, otherwise any bike in the country would effectively have been covered by a single policy. If your bike was stolen all you'd have had to do was find someone with a full Rider policy, bung them a drink and claim they had borrowed the bike with your permission and it was at their place when it was nicked. There'll be a similar loophole that's being plugged by the 500 metre rule. I haven't a problem with it as long as the security arrangements I have at home don't have to be replicated when I'm away, otherwise bang goes touring. Fortunately I've never found that to be the case.
Ehhhhh!..............those wert days lad When I first had my Riders policy, it was 750cc to unlimited, then when 1000cc bikes became popular they changed it to 750cc-999cc and 1000cc to unlimited. At that time I'd bought a Laverda 1200 but because I'd taken out the policy with them when it was 750 to unlimited they kept me in that group ? I wonder what happened to insurance companies that had morals
Well I tried DMC and after around 30 minutes, first of all trying to clarify that there was such a bike as a 1260 (DOH!!) and that the only two underwriters who could/would quote, would do so using a 1200 'Sport', yes that's right, 'Sport' as a comparable quotation model, I got my answer...... For the new Ducati on it's own, £785.00, which I stated I was incredulous about, especially as it was 2X, my current two-bike policy cover with legal and helmet and leathers cover as well. Needless to say, whilst I thanked the person on the other end of the phone, for their time and courtesy, I advised I would not be wasting any more of their time and certainly not any more of mine. So it looks like to change will cost me an additional circa £100, to move to a 1260 with my present insurers, MCE, which in itself isn't that much, but for a bike that is lower in overall value and specification than my Pikes Peak and doesn't yet appear on any underwriters systems, for which they carry out, what I now know to be a 'manual quotation' which interpreted simply means, we can add more cost to insure your bike, for no real reason, just because we can.......So there Anyway, a new 1260 MTS has been duly ordered and likely to arrive around mid/late-March. Job done, with numerous 'bits & pieces' from the earlier bike to be made available here at some point in the not too distant future, so look out, if you might be interested
I have a wanted list for my recently acquired DVT so very much interested in what you might have available!!
