Its that time of year again, and I have to get my bike insured. My current insurer's renewal is £306, cheapest alternative is MCE at £197 I seem to dimly recall MCE not being very good though? They do track insurance though which is the other reason I'd like to use them. Thoughts?
Read that they can be cheaper but if you have an off' they tend to wriggle out of payouts. Who are you currently with?
I had a torrid time with MCE last year and wouldn't touch them with a barge poll. I've renewed with Carole Nash who I heard a lot of good things about.
They're cheap but the customer service can be crap. I say can be, because I've had some people their end who have been seriously good, but I've also had the complete opposite, more so.
Every insurer is fantastic, until you need to make a claim, so MCE Nope if you need to make a claim, Never used them myself, but a few who have and needed to make a claim, well the list is endless of issues
It's a con. You're insured for track use but if you claim the excess is half the insured value of the bike. So if you own an 1199 and the insured value is 16k and you bin it on the track you have to pay the first 8k!. So if you're going to bin it make sure you write it off, preferably without killing yourself. Oh and have 8k!.
Trackday insurance is included with the policy (check the small print re excess, etc so you know what you're actually covered for). I had a road crash last year which although didn't seem to do much bike damage turned out to be very expensive. MCE were actually faultless and super good with sorting the payout quickly, I can't fault them for that. I happily paid the inflated renewal premium off the back of the good service. I bought a KTM Adventure last week after they quoted me £900 for six months to add to my existing policy, after buying the bike I called to take up the quote and it had mysteriously disappeared off the system and they wanted to charge me £1700 for six months!! Needless to say I went elsewhere and got it for £1350 for 12 months with Carole Nash who I'll probably move the other bikes over to next year as well due to the hassle this has caused me. It was very frustrating after getting such good service with the earlier claim. I think the real lesson is to change your provider every year as they are generally all as bad as each other.
Has anyone used anything else though? I actually think it's quite a good deal seeing as it's for free. They just dont want people claiming for every little lowside that does a £1000 damage when scratching a couple of panels. It costs a lot of money to get a normal track day policy and I doubt they are much different??
My mates son had a no other vehicles involved fatal a year or so again, obviously it was a hard time for my mate made only harder by MCE's total incompetence. After my mate informed them of his death and attempting to end the insurance MCE sent a letter with the salutation dear deceased which really does take the piss and funnily enough said mate went through the roof.
I'm trying to be as fair as possible about them really, as I have and still use them, which must say something. I guess I only really use them though because they're cheap. The customer service side has let me down far too many times. A lot of admin errors, and some people there with real attitude problems. But that's not to say they don't sometimes impress, I have spoken to a number of people from MCE who have been superb as previously mentioned.
I was insured with mce when I wrote off my 1098, mce quickly sent out an assessor who wrote the bike off, I had contacted Millsport Ducati to find out the value of my bike, they told me it's value if it was on their showroom floor ie how much they would sell it for , anyhows mce's assessor agreed this value and they very quickly paid me. I insured my next bike a 1098s with them at an increase of£10. I also thanked mce for their surprisingly fast and professional service and would use them again.
I think who you deal with when you phone up depends on your experience. I was insured with MCE for two years simply because they were the cheapest at insuring my 1199 as I hadn't yet built up a full NCB. Although the people I spoke to on the phone initially were great I had to put up with two years of incompetence when it came to getting my documents. I had to ring three times both years to get the email with the paperwork sent, then there were mistakes so again I had to ring several times to get it altered then several more calls to get the email resent. It was an absolute nightmare. In fact during the last year I wasn't sure if I was covered for pillion use as the documents said I wasn't but when I rung they said i was but I gave up trying to get the paperwork sent. I'm with Ducati insurance now. They were a breath of fresh air after after dealing with MCE. When you ring a person answers and says 'hello' no irritating waiting listening to Big Ed scratching his balls. They know what Termis are and my documents were threw before I'd come off the phone. I definitely recommend them but ring for a quote as they don't always quote that well on the automated online system.
I'm with MCE. When getting the quote my bike was covered in race rep stickers and the underwriter was not happy. I emailed the guy I was talking to @ MCE some pictures and he sent them on to the underwriter and they accepted me. The guy at MCE went out of his way to get me the best price. Having said that I've not had to contact them since handing over my hard earned so can't comment on pay outs.
