Practically Classics Forum

I am but as they have added £100 to my renewal this year (yes, £100!) i won't be for much longer.

They'll probably manage to lose the bulk of that proposed hike if you threaten to take your business elsewhere, a practice that I despise but that's pretty much everywhere these days.

When an insurance broker (FJ as it happened) tried that with me a couple of years ago I told them that if they could insure me at the hastily revised cost instead of the original quote, then they should have said so in the first place and stopped fannying about!
That was the year I took my custom to PF Spare instead.

I'm with http://www.peterbestinsurance.co.uk/. Once or twice, there has been the odd query but Peter or Malcolm Best sorted it out. I am something like customer number 92, so I've been with them a long time and these days, with a pretty static fleet, fortunately my only contact with them is when the renewals fall due.

TerryG wrote:I am but as they have added £100 to my renewal this year (yes, £100!) i won't be for much longer.

Is that all? They wanted nearly a third more from me, with an increase of over £250 - and that's with old accidents & points timing out/coming off my record! I switched to Peter James & I ended up paying less than I did last year.

Mine has gome from £89 to £186. Unlimited miles, no claims, no convictions, etc. (on my '68 standard mog)
Lancaster insurance have quoted £86 so i will be calling FJ in the morning and saying "OI!". If they come down to £90ish then i'll stay.
I'll offer to let them put a 5000 mile cap on as last year i did 389 (i really should drive that car more).

I have my 2 classic cars on a multicar policy with FJ with all the usual benefits I need,only a slight increase last year,to about £175 iirc?
Have been with them for over 10yrs!
Just about to add the 1954 MGTF1500,and that will cost me an extra £30 with a 5 figure agreed value till the policy expired in June2013.
Then we will see what they want to screw me for!
The letter I get each year with the price,is not an automatic renewal,the policy just ends if they dont hear from me.

I was and so were many of my fellow members of the Jowett Car Club as we had a club scheme in place with them (and still have but I do not think they obtain much business from it now)

The stories just go on - a fellow member wanted to insure a co driver who visiting from the states so that they could do a trip of the Baltics - but FJ will not insure any driver from the states - the business was lost to Hagerty who had no such hang ups about insuring forgien drivers

Another member who had his nephew on his policy - FJ cancelled the cover on the 24 year old nephew mid term through the policy - because they no longer wanted the risk - said nephew drives a 1950 Jowett Bradford van - No claims / No accidents etc - FJ did not want the business and cancelled the cover - Hagerty again came up with the cover

18 months ago I had 2 moderns & 2 classics with FJ - policy went from £800 to £2,000 on renewal - no claims / accidents etc - or rather it did'nt go to £2,000 as I found cover eleswhere for the moderns at £1250 - I left my Rover on cover with them for the last year at a premium of £130 - this year they wanted £198!

I found a better policy with Hagerty for £105

Apologies - I do not wish to sound like an advert for Hagerty - but from experiance these guys are on the ball - and they only insure classics !! so your premium is not propping up everyone elses cat with a sore paw or we needed a new TV so it accidently fell into the bath claims

I hope they offered the full premium back That sounds like a breach of contact to me and if a contract is breached, the whole contract becomes null and void, thus all monies paid are refundable (It would have been interesting to see what they would have done had there been a claim during the initial time the policy was in force. Unfortunatley many large firms seem to thyink that they are above the law or that their legal departments can make the law

We had a similar type of disagreement with Norwich Union, who provided cover on the shop. Based on the unfounded assumptions of their idiot assessor, they cancelled a policy (Even when we were able to prove that their assessor was wrong; presumably their flow chart didn't allow for the assessor being wrong). The trade assocation, of which we were then members (And who co promoted the scheme), did nothing and seemed very chummy with Norwich Union. The result is that we left the ACT and wouldn't now have anything to do with Norwich Union or Aviva, which is said to be the new name for it.

TerryG wrote:I am but as they have added £100 to my renewal this year (yes, £100!) i won't be for much longer.

Sorry to resurrect this thread but I've just had my renewal quote through from FJ - £228. Not too bad when you consider that this covers my 1966 Rover P6 2000SC which I use daily and put around 16k miles on last year (around a third of that was business miles) and it also covers my 3500S on a laid-up basis. However, my policy is underwritten by Royal & Sun Alliance (RSA) and I'm not entirely happy with the way they handled my claim last year. I don't think they fought hard enough with the other party's insurance company (Aviva) to recover my uninsured losses and as a result I'm about £75 down for something that was entirely the other party's fault.

So I'm shopping around. Not a great deal of success at the moment either

I started with those companies listed in Driving Force, the magazine of the Rover P6 Club. Adrian Flux quoted me £319 for the 2000 alone plus an additional £67 for my 3500S laid-up - strike one then. RH said I needed to have the use of a "modern" car as my daily driver - strike 2. Peter Best would not insure me for business use, Carole Nash said the same and that my private mileage was too high and Lancaster said much the same strikes 3, 4 and 5.

I'll try a few more later this week but it's looking more and more like I'm stuck with FJ. The other thing I've picked up on is that "classic" policies do not qualify for no claims discount (NCD). I've been driving on a classic policy for the last 4 and a half years so have effectively not been getting any NCD for those years. Not a problem as long as I stay on a "classic" policy, but it might be a problem if I subsequently change to a "standard" policy for a "modern" car or attempt to insure my daily use "classic" on a "standard" policy to cover the mileage and business use aspects. I just wonder how long it will be before FJ, or rather RSA decide that they will no longer provide this level of cover?

It's not just young drivers who struggle to find insurance for their P6s and I think the joint clubs need to look at investigating the declining availability of insurance for those of us who use our "classic" cars every day.

Dave