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I've just signed my life away on a new lease car. The old Octavia gets collected on the 19th... however, the insurance runs out on the 14th. How can I stay legal without getting my pants pulled down?
Following a very confusing phone call with Tesco Insurance, I can seemingly let the existing insurance auto-renew, then cancel it within a 14-day "cooling off" period. I'll be charged for the week it's under cover, though it wasn't clear whether I'll be charged for this. She said there weren't any admin fees for cancelling, then later said something about a £40 cancellation charge? Who knows, I might ring back and talk to someone with a brain. Main downside here is it will mean that £1200 disappears from my account for a fortnight (for comparison, a new quote via the Meerkat is £800, the robbing gits).
Accept that I won't be driving it, find somewhere offroad to stash it for a week?
Leave it on the street, don't drive it, and hope no-one notices? Sod's Law, someone will drive in to the bloody thing.
Get a policy quote for the new car, take it out initially on the Octy then have it transferred. Presumably this will involve some sort of admin fee, and it defers the problem so I'll be in the same boat in three years' time.
Get a short term policy. Tempcover.com comes out at £106 for the six days (anyone know any better ones?).
... something else?
Get it collected earlier? It doesn't have to be on the last day of your lease.
Else ask your insurer about temporary cover. I've had a few times where I've got a new car but not yet sold the old one, they've been fine with doing temporary cover for a week or two at a time until it got sold.
Accept that I won’t be driving it, find somewhere offroad to stash it for a week?
Personally id do this if i had no intention of using it and could get it collected from where its stashed
However have been using Veygo (Admiral) for my sons learner driver insurance and have been happy with the price & ease of getting a quote/insurance. They also do temporary cover so could be worth getting a quote as £106 sounds high for 6 days... https://quote.veygo.com/car-sharing/quote-start
Get it collected earlier?
Can't hurt to ask I suppose. Though I'd rather minimise the amount of time I'm carless... Mind you, for the cost of the cover I could probably just use public transport / taxis.
Else ask your insurer about temporary cover.
The current insurer, you mean? The previous conversation didn't instil me with confidence TBH.
I’ve had my insurance with Quotemehappy.com fir the last three years. It’s all done entirely online and you can change stuff on your policy pretty much live and it tells you if any charges apply before you press the button
When I changed my car I sat in the dealership and changed the car on my policy online on my phone with no admin charges.
However have been using Veygo (Admiral)
Fell at the tick box that says, "I confirm this car is not a rental, trade or fleet vehicle"
I wonder if I can just hoy it back to Skoda and make it their problem?
Get it clarified but a personal lease is not rental/trade/fleet. Most insurers don't consider them any differently to a personal owned/financed car these days.
PCP? Then Not classified as Trade/Rental/Fleet vehicle just mention that it's your own private car.
There must be billions of folks on PCP's that are privately owned.
PCH not PCP.
When Mrs H bought her new car the Gnusmobile was kept on cover for a fortnight to allow her to get rid, not sure which company she is with but they were happy to have two on cover at once for a brief period. She didn't even ask for it, they just said you've got two weeks to get rid of or SORN the old one.
I didn't get that from AF when I changed van, and having seen hers do it I did ask for it.
Went further through, it says I must be the registered keeper. Ho hum.
My last one was BCH so picked up by third party not Skoda. Insuring it beyond end month was proving tedious/expensive. Eventually after a bit of haggling they came and picked it up a couple of weeks early. Might be the easiest option.
Temporary addition vehicle on whatever policy you still have in place. It’s a standard thing
It's not an additional vehicle. It'll have gone before the new one gets here.
My last one was BCH so picked up by third party not Skoda.
Do you mean BCA? That's who is collecting mine.
Get a policy quote for the new car, take it out initially on the Octy then have it transferred. Presumably this will involve some sort of admin fee, and it defers the problem so I’ll be in the same boat in three years’ time.
This is what I did for Mrs OTS latest car. Quotemehappy, exactly the same as @Perchypanther above. I sat in the dealers and changed it after dropping the trade in off and before I drove the new one away.
Edit - if you just stash it, will you not have to SORN it?
Edit – if you just stash it, will you not have to SORN it?
Only if it's not taxed, I'd have thought.
Only if it’s not taxed, I’d have thought.
Apparently not
your vehicle isn’t insured (even for a short time, for example because there’s a delay renewing your policy)
https://www.gov.uk/sorn-statutory-off-road-notification
Main downside here is it will mean that £1200 disappears from my account for a fortnight (for comparison, a new quote via the Meerkat is £800, the robbing gits).
Switch to pay monthly? temporarily pay probably £110 for month one, then cancel within the 14 day cooloff and be refunded.
Sorry I can't help with advice, but do you really pay £1.2k to insure a Skoda?
your vehicle isn’t insured (even for a short time, for example because there’s a delay renewing your policy)
Oh for fox sake. Thank you both, that's probably a non-starter then unless I can make it Skoda's problem.
Sorry I can’t help with advice, but do you really pay £1.2k to insure a Skoda?
It's a 150PS 2.0TDi SE Tech Octavia (all the toys), insurance was £1800 the first year I had it. I had no NCB as I'd just come off the company car scheme, the previous car got almost written off in a hit & run overnight so I effectively had zero insurance history. As there's no third party to claim against they class it as an own-fault accident despite me being in bed at the time.
A non-renewal quote just now after two years' ownership came in at £800. I thought the new one would be prohibitively expensive as it's 183PS, but that's coming in at £600.
I don't feel so bad about my renewal nudging over £1k this year now, as it's a joint policy for two cars and a van.
I wasn't being sniffy about Skodas BTW, I like them.
It's a nice place to be for sure, I can't really fault it. I had a couple of minor niggles (the sat nav is a prick, for instance) but I'd be nit-picking at best.
I don't need a car that big any more, so I'm replacing it with something slightly more mid life crisis.
That's really expensive. The insurance on my highly modified Elise and the wife's Freelander only used to be £500 combined.
JP
183"PS", German then, go on what is it, Cougar? You know you want to tell us - you might even get rid of me for a couple of weeks if it's properly petrol head, 😉 joking aside thanks mods for letting me back in. I've just ordered a fast charge Zoé 50 in blue. The old fashioned way though: a cheque for the lot including the battery.
It's not German, no (isn't everything "PS" these days?). And I'm not saying yet, I'm going to post a pic when it arrives. (OK, I guess I'll tell you if you guess correctly, but that's unlikely.)
Don't get too excited though. It's very far from 'petrolhead,' just slightly smaller / nippier than I usually go for.
And I’m not saying yet, I’m going to post a pic when it arrives.
This is going to be worse than waiting for Christmas when I was 4.
PS is German for BHP and just fractionally higher, a sort of metric BHP until kW became the norme.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pferdest%C3%A4rke
183ps sounds like the lowest output of the BMW B48 2.0 petrol engine. In which case, is it a 120i, 220i or 320i (or X series equivalent)?
183ps sounds like the lowest output of the BMW B48 2.0 petrol engine.
As I said,
It’s not German
It's also not a 2L so not the same block. It's probably a similar level of excitement / dullness to a 1-series though.
This is going to be worse than waiting for Christmas when I was 4.
Only if for Christmas you got a stick and hoop, and an orange.
Blimey, I thought my new motor was steep at 500 quid a year!
I've got my old car for sale which has monthly cover for £30 per month.
Just to reiterate re: the insurance situation: if a car is on a public road, it's got to have both tax and insurance, it can't have one or the other. DVLA can be quite got on it, and ANPR patrols ping it up. I can tell you for a fact there have been cars in my local area towed for it (under the Continuous Insurance Enforcement rules)
A mate had a fine though the post for it. Baffles me that it's not totally automated tbh, but you know, government agencies sharing data... (Plus it would probably involve Capita)
Anyways, tbh I'd do (and have done) the take out/cancel in 14 days thing. You'll likely be charge pro rata for the days you used, and they'll try and charge you an admin fee and then drop it.
If it was a cheaper car I'd recommend finding somewhere off road and stashing/SORNing but imho it's too high a value for that.
It's probably not worth trying to find an insurer who'll insure both it and your next car and then trying to swap it, as when I've tried this in the past the initial quote for the new car has magically got a lot more expensive.
To everyone amazed at the cost of the OPs insurance: have you read his post where it clearly explains why?;) I could point out that my silly modified imported sports car is way cheaper, but that's totally irrelevant as I'm in nothing like the same circumstances as him.
So, PCH means you are not the registered keeper then?
Thats odd, so technically you are just the driver...
Shirely there’s plenty of insurers that’ll insure for a few days/weeks... I mean think of all those deleivery drivers and the like that flit from place to place delivering vehicles.. Doesn’t Countzero do this kinda thing?
The H is for hire 🙂 ie lease.
My wife even got the V5 for hers, but there's a difference between owner and registered keeper. V5 only signifies the second one.
The delivery drivers will be covered under a corporate/trade policy. And before we head down that path, no it's not worth the OP trying to get one of those!
It a lease is finance loaned on an asset owned by the provider of the asset, but the asset is in the lease holders name... it’s the finance they borrow..
Eh?
Anyway, plenty of insurers will insure you for a short period of time.
plenty of insurers will insure you for a short period of time.
Yes, but the complication here is with the CIE/VED side of things.
Honestly, the 'take new policy and cancel' route is the easiest way of doing things. Only issue is the time to refund the, err, refund.
Source: reformed serial car changer :D.
Could you pay it on a CC, OP? Then the refund would go back on that and you'd only have a minimal payment?
@submarined - that's really useful, thank you.
So, PCH means you are not the registered keeper then?
Registered keeper, I believe, is VW Finance. I've never seen a V5.
Could you pay it on a CC, OP?
Ooh, that's not a bad idea.
Mind you, doing that I could just start a new policy and then sack it off a week later, pay a month's deposit rather than £1200 to be refunded.
I'm not sure if it works the same way if you pay it monthly, I'd be wary of that as aren't you effectively entering into a finance agreement? I may be talking bobbins. I've never done it that way, only ever in one lump sum.
I'm going to caveat everything I've said by saying that that was my understanding and experience when I was swapping round cars a lot a few years ago (after CIE had come into force) and that was with cars that were mostly worth considerably less (I mean, I know a lot of JDM stuff has gone up in value, but I made some excellent decisions to only buy ones that defied that trend)
Do you mean BCA? That’s who is collecting mine.
Yes. I paid the balance off three weeks early so SKODA would release it to BCA. Then badgered BCA until they came and did an assessment and a pickup before I needed to renew th insurance.
If you can make way without a car for a few days then call VWFS or BCA to rearrange collection whilst car is still covered under insurance. It shouldn’t be a problem, they may even give you the option to off hire at a dealership...
ignore.
I’m not sure if it works the same way if you pay it monthly, I’d be wary of that as aren’t you effectively entering into a finance agreement?
It is a finance agreement yes. Some companies allow you to cancel within a cooling off period without charging an Admin fee, some might. That’s worth checking.
Just looking on the RAC site states 3 companies offer short term insurance from 1hr to 30days.. Cuvva/Skyinsurance/Veygo... one does it by an App only which means you can start/stop when you like.
Quite a long read so this may have already been suggested.
Have you a new insurer selected yet?
If so contact them and ask them to provide x days temp cover for the old car and then pause until the new car is delivered. Ask for this as a condition of cover accept the price may rise for the additional cover but get them to confirm the total cost and record the call in case they ask for admin fees later in the process.
Take it back to the dealer and say you will be away for work so need to drop it off a few days early.
Also i've never had to pay an admin fee to change cars on an insurance policy.
183ps sounds like the lowest output of the BMW B48 2.0 petrol engine.
As I said,
It’s not German
It’s also not a 2L so not the same block. It’s probably a similar level of excitement / dullness to a 1-series though.
It’s a 1.5 litre eco boost Focus and I claim my £5
Just as a coda to this.
I ended up letting my annual insurance renew, then cancelled it a week later in the 14-day 'cooling off' period. It meant like a grand disappeared out of my account for several days, but cost me like £20 overall.
I insured myself on my girlfriend's car for the day over the weekend, I went with insuredaily.co.uk who were the cheapest I could find, that was £25 for 24 hours.
And because CZ and others have asked, here's what I collected today.
Can't see it behind "we value your private parts" banner..
So I'm guessing its blue, has some white lettering on the side and has a big green banner along the side as some sort of two/tone special order whatsit...
My farts used to sound just like that car until I had my abcess removed.
The old ones are the best. (-:
All this over a Honda Civic? I feel cheated.
😉
Might be a bit late now..but for future reference
https://www.cuvva.com/0