Left to their own devices, insurers jack up premiums

Is it time for your insurance renewal? Be as smart as John Edwards to avoid being ripped-off

You never know when you may need to claim on insurance (Getty)

My warning last week that insurers have for years been betraying our trust by rewarding our loyalty with sneaky increased premium prices struck a chord with reader John Edwards.

“Last year my car insurance premium with Hastings was £196,” he told me. The policy is due for renewal today, 12 December, so he was sent a renewal notice recently by the insurer. It was a shock.

“They quoted me £318 – an increase of 62 per cent,” John reports. There was no apparent reason for the huge increase so, naturally, he refused to renew and instead complained to the company. In the meantime he sensibly shopped round for a fair price from a rival, using comparison sites, contacting companies direct and going through brokers.

He eventually secured what he decided was a reasonable price through the broker Adrian Flux. “It cost £240,” he says. “It’s still a big increase on last year but it was the lowest I could get.”

By my reckoning, the sorry affair has left him with a slightly less than 25 per cent increase, which is still steep. But the deal he eventually ended up with was roughly two-thirds of the cost his existing insurer wanted to sting him for.

And it’s a further lesson to us all that we need to take matters into our own hands to get a fair deal from insurers – because they almost certainly won’t give us one!

If your motor insurance is coming up for renewal, check how much you paid last year to see how much you’re being ripped off this year.