To wonder what the point of a no claims bonus is?

[yellowallpaper]

I think I actually do know the basics, but am a bit confused nevertheless less.

I have had a full NCD for a good few years, I am a super careful driver. I have always paid to have it protected.

I am also the named driver on another car fully comp.

So during a storm (storm David I think with proper high winds) when I was driving the friends car, parked in a car par, the wind wrenched the door out of my hand and caused some minor damage to another car's wing mirror. I fessed up and friends insurance paid up. I was told to not worry about it.

Came to renew my own insurance with protected NCD and this accident has increased my premium by £70. So what is the point of protecting my NCD if I get no benefit?

I had a very minor accident recently (we were moving off from a roundabout, car in front of me does an emergency stop for no apparent reason and I go into the back of her at a whole 2mph, causing no damage at all). My renewal had come through and they've tried to put it up by £500...so I guess the benefit of protecting your NCD is that it only went up by £70 rather than £500!

Yes - your premium still goes up as they see you as a higher risk.......(even if it's not your fault)

Separate to the ncd!

The NCD protection meant you didn't lose your full discount after 1 claim. It gets chipped away instead so if you had 8 years NCD and made a claim, your next year's NCD might be 7 years instead. Make a couple of claims and it could reduce to 4/5 years NCD.

Ah, so that was the point of protecting it? I'm sure it says I'm allowed 3 accidents with the protection maybe I should actually read the policy! But £70 is better than £500.

So furious as it was a genuine act of god in that it was a named storm and the winds were awful. Felt like screaming 'force majeure' like Bart Simpson!

Full ncd can knock 70% -75% off your base premium. Your base premium will go up if you claim. fyi i don't protect mine had an accident and now my discount is about 35%

My premium doubled when I had a minor accident. I wasn't at fault. I'd had protected my NCD. I really don't see why I bothered.

Force majeure only works in favour of the insurers.... ie they can claim it to avoid paying out. Happened recently and the ONLY reason the insurers paid out is it affected enough people that not paying would have caused a social media backlash. But they had no legal obligation to pay the claims

Change your insurer every year. There is absolutely no discount given for loyalty, which is unfair, but they rely on you taking the easy route and not comparing prices at renewal. Although it's a minor pain, it's well worth putting a reminder in your diary a month before the renewal date to go on comparison sites, especially so if you've had any form of accident during the year.

@Twillow it was the same across every insurer

Yes, I am going to switch insurers. I do check every year and there's usually nothing in it (I'm with direct line) but have rechecked and it's cheaper elsewhere, so I'm off.

Fucking rip off merchants, the lot of them. We had to claim on our insurance when a woman turned right at lights into the path of DH. So it was a full no fault claim but our premium still went up and because our car was old our payout for a replacement was fuck all. We couldn’t find a like for like the same age as we had taken Care of ours and it was a specific spec. We were thousands out of pocket as we ended up having to top up with our savings to buy a newer car.

Posted too soon. We had fully nCD too. When I called to ask why our premium had gone up by sooooo much even though our newer car was still a few years old and a smaller engine, less luxurious spec so a much lower insurance group, they said the tthr claim, although no fault so through the woman’s insurance , and we had NCD, meant that DH was no classed as more high risk

I was apoplectic. It was a clear no fault claim! He was just driving along minding his own business going through lights that we on steady green and this divvy drove into HiM!! I was raging. The other woman’s car was newer and bigger and had barely a scratch on it but because DH is driver trained he turned so that he would not hit her head on as he saw she had a kid in the front passenger seat, and he end up hitting a bollard head on instead. Car was a write off. she just had a few dents. Ambulance came for DH and as he is stoical and knew they are under pressure he refused to go to hospital in it and got his dad to drive him.

I wish we’d bloody paid for injury compensation now, after realising how we would be treated by the insurers. At the time he only had a couple of cuts and bruises and broken glasses but it happened at a weekend so not even any time off work.

We are not whipcash types but I honestly look back and think we were idiots for not trying to make out he was more traumatised than he was.

OP it definitely pays to shop around every single year. Comparison sites are your friend. It’s worth it. I don’t know how they justify putting your premium up so much each year sometimes when you haven’t claimed. I sometimes think they don’t actuallky want your business anymore.

As has been said, NCD protects your discount % that is then applied to the premium - which will have gone up due to you making a claim.

I don’t understand it either.

I’ve had no claims/ accidents/anything in 12 years. I always protect my NCD. But what does that mean? Does “protect” just mean apply the NCD? If I chose not to protect my NCD does that mean I get no discount?

You get a discount of 70% you are allowed two fault accidents a year and you keep your 70%

If you don’t protect it it goes down 2 years at a time in line with their discounts which should be in the policy

So example 70% 1 claim - 2 years = 50%
Next claim - 2 years - 30% discount
And so on

Depends on the insurer

I have over 10 years NCD and it's protected. Yet direct line have increased my payment by £70. They did this on the phone when I notified them of the accident (I am on the policy for a motorbility car and this was the accident) and direct line checked and put my premium up by that amount on the spot.

So that must mean they have reduced my basic protection by a % amount because of this claim?

That means the price I have from the price comparison sites, which is lower despite the accident and losing my NCD, is a bit less that Direct Line who are doing this 'stab loyal customers in the back' trick?

curly. I too had a lovely reliable little car with a tiny mileage written off when a lorry tried to kill me and my son. We lost out on a replacement car big time. They are really scum when it comes to ripping customers off.

It's not that they have reduced your discount percentage, it's that they have recalculated the premium the discount is applied to. So (vague figures) let's say the premium for you without any previous claims but before considering ncd was previously 1000 per year. If you have a 70% ncd it comes down to 300. With a claim they've now said you are higher risk and so your base premium is 1500 - with 70%ncd applied it becomes 450. You're still getting the NCD but the premium is higher.

I suspect if you ran your details through comparison sites with and without the accident you'd see this reflected. The premiums are all risk based and the numbers show that those with no fault claims are still a higher risk compared to those with zero claims.

Because insurance companies are businesses, not charities. They have to charge according to the risk. You could always shop around.

I work for insurance (its a total rip off in my opinion but they some how get away with it) so..

Your ncd protection protects the no claim years not the premium, so if the had happened your insurance premium would increase as it was a claim made despite the ncd protection. If your ncd wasnt protected this would drop the amount of discount applied to your policy (75% to 45% for example) which would increase the premium substantially.

The protection is good in the sense of if you didnt have it the premium would increase much more if any claims are made.

However I would query this with your insurance company, if this happened whilst you driving another vehicle thats not the one you have insured yourself, then this should only be noted and not recorded as an actual claim - therefore you should be charged any extra.

I always advise people to shop around and use comparison websites, hope this helps!

I had an argument with an unhelpful call handler over this years ago! She was so shit at explaining it, just kept repeating the same words. Basically as far as I have understood since, NCD is a discount on your basic police price. Your basic policy price goes up when you have an accident, regardless of if you have protected NCD (they're not forthcoming telling you that!!). If you didn't protect your NCD, your policy skyrockets much more because your discount went up in smoke as well as your policy price increase. Protected NCD stays in place even with an accident.

Change your insurer every year. There is absolutely no discount given for loyalty, which is unfair, but they rely on you taking the easy route and not comparing prices at renewal.

Nah - haggle every year every year for the last 11 my current insurer increases the price of my policy. Every year I ring them up and say I have a quote from somebody else for less but is rather stay with them, what could they do. We go through the policy then they speak to their bosses and almost every year i've ended up paying less than the previous one.

Yes as others have said it's outrageous that you are classed as being higher risk if you've suffered a no-fault accident. In one case, I had to report the theft of my car (break in key theft) which subsequently was found , fortunately undamaged. So although insurer had been notified, there was no claim. Yet my premium shot up!

If you are in an accident that is not your fault, resulting in your premium going up, can you sue the other party? Their (possible) recklessness has caused you a financial loss.

So furious as it was a genuine act of god in that it was a named storm and the winds were awful. Felt like screaming 'force majeure' like Bart Simpson!

It wasn't an act of god, it was your negligence. Loads of people will have gone out in that storm but they didn't all end up losing control of their door and damaging another car. You knew there was a storm, if you weren't confident you could hold the door you should have parked further away from another car.