Churchill insurance have doubled my premium

[Justanothermum01]

From £550 to just under 1k.
Nothing whatsoever has changed in the last year which would affect my premium.
I’ve just out my details through a comparison website and can get the same level of insurance elsewhere for around £450 pa.
I’m actually pretty disgusted with Churchill.

It happened to me last year - my car insurance went up from around £210 to nearly £500 and I had no incidents or claims.

I did phone them and they reduced it to about £390. This year it is about £400 on the nose. So it's not gone up much this year but it's still double what I was paying two years ago.

You shouldn't have to phone them to get a fair price, especially as times have changed and they don't employ enough people on the phones anyway so you have to wait ages to talk to anyone and the call takes about three times as long as it could because of all the stuff they "have" to read out to you (even though you've got it all on paper at home).

I think it's perfectly reasonable for the OP to get annoyed and think responses like "crack on love" are patronising in the extreme.

Companies should offer fair pricing.

Edited: I see some people found cheaper premiums elsewhere, I didn't. I didn't shop around that much but Direct Line offered me £390 and as Churchill offered that without knowing that was what DL had offered I went with it.

My Churchill insurance actually went down £40, location dependent i suspect

The AA's breakdown cover is outrageous. We now have cover with our Nationwide account for £13 a month (which offers other things as well).

The AA wanted to charge us over £300 for cover this year.

Well the regulators disagree with you as in some areas, loyalty can't be punished. Insurance is one of them. New customers are meant to pay the same as existing customers.

AA membership is not, which is why they'll charge new customers £50 and existing customers much more.

I don't actually understand why they chase new customers so much when retention is cheaper than acquisition.

Edited: I see some people found cheaper premiums elsewhere, I didn't. I didn't shop around that much but Direct Line offered me £390 and as Churchill offered that without knowing that was what DL had offered I went with it

I didn't actually know DL and Churchill were the same stable. Ah, maybe they did know then. The two quotes were very similar, eg £392 compared with £398 or something.

Direct Line (who own Churchill) were significantly loss making recently - resulting in them cancelling their dividends to shareholders, a big drop in the share price and changes in senior management (CEO/CFO etc.) New management had a very clear mandate to turn business performance around - resulting in price increases (possibly to a greater extent than the rest of the market).

Insurance is a portfolio business - you might not have a poor claims history, but maybe people in your demographic, or your postcode area do, or maybe parts for your car have gone up in price or are difficult to get hold of. Or maybe they have a concentration of risks similar to you/your vehicle, such that by the point of renewal they don't want any more, so your price increased to encourage you to move. It's almost certainly not personal!

Insurance is a business not a charity. Despite the best efforts of the Financial Conduct Authority to level the playing field between new customers and renewals, it usually pays to shop around 3-4 weeks before renewal is due.

I was with Esure, mine went from £300 to £1200 - no claims made. Expected to pay a bit more but not that much more. I went with another company in the end, £300/year with better cover

You're talking about a different aspect of renewal, there should be no difference between a new customer and a renewer but the renewer doesn't have to be offered a better price than they could get else where

That's where loyalty comes in, nothing to do with a comparison with a new customer.

If you can prove that the new customer has better terms then absolutely you should report it but there's no grounds for complaint if a totally different insurer offers a better deal than your existing one

You're talking about a different aspect of renewal, there should be no difference between a new customer and a renewer but the renewer doesn't have to be offered a better price than they could get else where

I didn't say you have to charge someone the same or better than they'd get elsewhere. But some of these renewal prices are ludicrous and almost certainly significantly more than a new customer would get.

Also I would have thought that the FCA Consumer Duty would preclude an insurer from knowingly ripping people off and hoping they won't call in to protest that their quote is too high.

Yes I was mightily annoyed about their price hike this year and they refused to negotiate it down. I shopped around and found an AA insurance lower than last years Churchill premium...happy days.

What's your proof that new customers are being offered better deals? As I said above you really need to be reporting those insurers as it's no longer allowed

Insurees can quote whatever price they like, why are you assuming they owe the customer anything?

Unless there's a cartel operating it's a market, any customer who doesn't shop around. Is foolish. There are almost no barriers to accessing the whole market nowadays unless you literally have no way to use the internet, and car drivers who can't do that must be very few and far between, you can get as many quotes as you like.

You seem determined to see something undehand going on but aren't giving any evidence for it

Absolutely

The companies know full well that they will be penalising elderly and vulnerable people who aren't online - or maybe who are not fully confident with the online world, having lived the majority of their lives before it was a thing.

It's easy for those of us who are confident online to dismiss it as 'just a few minutes at the touch of a few buttons', but we too will be elderly one day (if we're lucky). Yes, it won't be the internet by then, but I'm sure there will be other innovations that are second-nature to our grandchildren, but which we just cannot get to grips with.

Nowhere is their 'game' clearer than when they send you out an outrageous renewal quote - and notice how desperately keen they are to get you to auto-renew "So you don't need to worry about your insurance lapsing, and it's another thing you don't have to think about" - and then they can suddenly knock hundreds of pounds off when you call to complain/cancel.

Whatever their algorithms might be, and whatever risk profiles they base everything on, how can they possibly differ so much with one phone call from you?

Never renew, they all do it.
See what it says the price is for Churchill on the price comparison website, they should match it. I've done it before but with a different company.

The problem is that many of us simply don't have the option to pay more for a better-known company - many of which also have reputations for cowboyery (and which you obviously can't know until you have to make a claim).

The basic facts are that, if you run a car, the government forces you (not unreasonably) to buy an insurance policy. Supposing you can find one with an unknown company for, say, £400 that you can just about afford, which ticks the legal box and then enables you to keep your family car on the road; or otherwise a (hopefully) 'reputable' company will charge you £600 (or more) that you just can't stretch to... it's one of the 'joys' of being (relatively) poor: having to buy something rubbish and hope (and cross that bridge if you come to it), rather than being able to afford proper security.

This is par for the course with insurance companies. I always call around every year. It's the way they operate. Take your business elsewhere.

I changed to Aviva after several years with Churchill for home insurance last month for the same reason. Increased premium by £70 pa - so nowhere near as high as yours but it still put it way over what I can comfortably afford. I've never made a claim.
Aviva offered the same cover, with 2 of the excesses considerably less too, for £130 less. When i cancelled my cover with Churchill they did the "sorry to see you go" thing, but made no offer to reconsider their premium.

Loyalty never pays these days.

New companies often give a discount to new customers

Also insurance companies have a target customer - perhaps Churchill don't feel you're their target really

Insurance companies aren't allowed to give discounts to new customers, it's illegal.

Which companies are doing that? How do mumsnetters know about these supposed illegal insurance quotes but no one involved in consumer finance is talking about it? How does Martin Lewis not know about it?

When i cancelled my cover with Churchill they did the "sorry to see you go" thing, but made no offer to reconsider their premium.

Yes, it's the insurance company equivalent of your partner having an affair - then when you find out and kick them out, expressing surprise with "Sorry to lose you", as though it was all originally your bizarre choice. Yeah... no.

At least be honest about it and own your actions!

I've actually got more respect for a company that hikes your rates up for reasons of its own, and when you ring them to say that a competitor is cheaper shrugs and says "that's nice for you, but our price is our price, don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out sorry to see you go."

The "over charge and then let you ring up and haggle us down" game is pretty iffy and arguably discriminatory.

The OP was complaining about herself. She hasn't said she is too old 🙄or vulnerable to use the internet or a telephone. She is talking about herself, not anyone else. In that scenario, "disgusted" seems like a melodramatic description.

Maybe you think a better solution would be for there to be no such thing as renewals - everyone has to remember to take out new insurance every year, and if they forget, then they're just uninsured for a bit?