Insurance - things

Help & Advice
21

Thats a lovely post thank you slow-ride. In fact everybody who has posted has been helpful and kind, thank you.

For me it is the unfairness and the greed of it all, literally if they had quoted me £2,000 or even the same as last year £2,100 I probably wouldn’t have blinked I would have dutifully paid, I like the company [Bennets] I have a certain level of trust (unearned or not) in it, and (yes I know I know) I prefer loyalty over anything else.

With that in mind they broke my trust, they were greedy they asked for £2,500 and my brain can not grasp the logic in losing a customer who is paying (and has paid) a metric ***tonne of money, taking into account risk of a proven track record, a tonne of security, consiencious of always making sure everything is secure, someone who understands the risk, where is the logic? £2000 would represent how many outside london bikers taking up their insurance V the risk which is as mitigated as it possibly can be? How does it make any sense.

And it caught me in a valunerable moment which was unfortunate.

I would love to move outside London, I loathe it with a passion, but my job would rather people quit than transfered and it took me 8 years to get this job so I am not ready to leave it, and the fairly elderly parents who I tend to keep on the rails and if I am honest really honest, I like were I am living now. This being said… I am looking.

I have gone with MCE, no choice really apart from one other company who quoted 7.7k MCE were the ONLY company to quote me, Bennets, BMW etcetc all did not (theres some irony for you, BMW happy to sell you a bike, won’t insure you - brilliant). I am sure if I had phoned up each of these Companies I might have managed to get quotes (I got a 5k from Carol Nash last year on the phone) but it seemed like a hopeless task which would not be good for my well-being right now.

MCE had a lovely lady on the phone who was easy to talk to so that helps, the excess is £2000 (yowser) but the premium is (cough) only £905 I know for the majority of you that is still massively excessive but for me thats a serious decrease. I still have fully comprehensive, SDPC and B1 and for the first time no-claims protection.

So in the grand scheme of things Bennets greed lead to a massive drop in my insurance and a bunch of nice people were kind - I’m going to call it a win.

It seems to have knocked my confidence a bit (A LOT lets be honest) I’ve not got back on the bike yet, I’ll have to on Tuesday so it should be okay. So this too shall pass.

Thank you all very much for allowing me to vent.

2 Likes
22

Americans use metric tonnes (1,000 kg = 2,205 lbs) to mean a lot more of something because their tons are only 2,000 lbs (907 kg). But our tons at 2,440 lbs (1,016 kg) are bigger than metric ones, so here it would mean getting a small discount!

Anyway, excess insurance is pretty cheap and will be less than £100 to cover a few thousand pounds.

The catch is it will not pay out unless your bike policy does, so it will not help with repairs up to £2,000 because the excess means they are not covered. But if you are worried about theft or major damage that will cost more then it will cover that.

I am not sure if it is available from MCE, even though I am with them as the only ones to offer me a reasonable price, too. But there are companies which provide it as a standalone product. And you will need to check they cover business use, as some do not.

23

I used to pay close to that with mce even when I lived in Epsom with a garage. Mind you I had 3pts and a number of no fault accidents that added to it. I also had two bikes but the difference between 1 and 2 was minimal. I had less of an excess, but proportionately not too far off (1.4x premium I paid). Excess insurance is a good shout, you’ll probably find mce offer it as well. Well one of the insurers they work with as they are a broker

I don’t know if this is how it works but I wonder if now you have a record of a lesser premium, it might drop future years… And that because you had paid X in previous years you were always classed as a risk at that level. Doubtful as I don’t think that’s how it works but I’m hoping for you.

24

They’re all scum so wouldn’t say MCE are better or worse than others. In my case they’ve literally been the only insurer that would insure my bike so I don’t really have much choice. Mileage wise - I know from my previous conversations with them that they have mileage split into bands and the first one goes up to 10,000 so it doesn’t matter if you say you’ll do 2,000 miles or 9,000. I’ve always had it at 10k.

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25

Ducati are the same. They were happy to insure me in the first year - obviously they realised there would be no sale if the potential customer was unable to ride the bike from the showroom - but when it came to renewal they simply said “we will no longer be providing insurance”.

If the industry doesn’t wake up to what is happening in London there might come a time where bike sales disappear completely. A market of 8 million unavailable to them.

26

Fuck that i pay £89 per year on my 2007 F800ST

27

I cannot understand why the motorcycle industry, in the shape of manufacturers, importers and retailers does not recognise the negative effect on sales produced by high insurance premiums. I would suggest that they all get together and present a business case to a couple of underwriters to provide insurance that is affordable. As Michael748 says, the market may well disappear if nothing is done!

1 Like
28

The manufacturers need to do more. London can’t be the only major city suffering from bike thefts. If they find themselves unable to sell into large cities, where most wealth is concentrated, they are already losing market share.

There are many things they could do to improve security. Diskloks could be standard. Alarms and tracking devices should be standard and very difficult to remove.

But they could go further, just like you can remotely wipe your phone if it is stolen, you should be able to remotely disable the bike’s ECU. To reactivate it would involve providing proof you are the owner - hopefully better proof than just being in possession of the V5 - manufacturers should run a membership scheme which you transfer to future owners. Hell, this could even be a revenue stream for them.

Once the ECU can be deactivated remotely, and assuming purchasing a replacement ECU also requires proof of ownership, even bike-jackings would become pointless because stealing the bike with the key would only get the tow-rags down the road the few minutes it would take the victim to get online.

Yes the bike could still be stolen for parts but again that risk can have better control with RFID built into the components. Imagine if RFID meant if the main components - frame, engine - were changed, the ECU wouldn’t recognise new ones until the owner presented proof of purchase. A stolen frame or stolen engine would be worthless. RFID is basically free these days, shops put it in garments simply to track customers around shops and build flow profiles for their architects and planners. It is so cheap it could be included in not just the main components but all of them, rendering any theft of parts pointless.

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29

Sounds clever, but would that be the end of major second hand parts from breakers ?

30

Perhaps. But I can’t imagine anyone having bought a new bike and is struggling to insure it, and is potentially facing giving up riding as a result, would be worried about that loss.

31

I think you’re probably right.

Not so sure about owners a few years down the line though.

32

We all have a problem a few years down the line, I refer to my post above:

We won’t be buying parts from scrapyards when they already need to be programmed onto the bike by main dealers. If the evolution of CANBUS technology and diagnostics has already caused us this expense, let’s have some security built into it.

33

Bit confused as to why you would need diagnostic software for a wiring fault. any error code should automatically clear when rectified on late Ducati. Even on earlier ones the error would move to the ecu history once corrected.

34

Yes you are right, my explanation wasn’t clear enough. My point was that a quick solder job which would work fine on an older bike was refused by my local mechanic on the basis (probably right) that a soldered wire might have a different resistance and cause confusion to the CANBUS.

This means simple repairs are no longer available meaning bikes become more expensive to repair and insure as more has to be done at main dealers.

35

Sorry I wasn’t clear. You can solder and repair Can wiring with no ill effects. I does not alter the resistance enough to a impede data transmission. Have also soldered interfaces to read off signals for high beam etc. Techs make out like it’s some weird voodoo thing, but it not that scary.

1 Like