Advice needed - marmalade car insurance policy. AIBU to think honesty is the best idea?

[rosesinmygarden]

Does anyone else have experience of the following and can advise please? I need actual advice (not judgement) from anyone who may have been in this situation themselves.

Ds has a marmalade policy as a young named driver on dw's car. He passed nearly a year ago.

One condition of the policy is that ds does no more than 50% of the total journeys as the driver. I did not want the policy because of this but dw insisted for various reasons and planned to use the car enough to make the policy work.

I've realised that with a month to go on the policy, ds has done a little more than 50%. By a few hundred miles, I think, although I can't be 100% sure.

What do we do? I think we should phone marmalade and discuss. Dw is worried that if we do that it may open a can of worms.

I've told ds that under no circumstances is he to drive the car for the time being. The last thing I want is him having an accident and not being covered as that would obviously have legal consequences.

Dw's plan is to spend the next week (ds is off school) driving the car and doing lots of extra journeys to make up the mileage. I'm not sure this will wash with marmalade.

I’m confused, do you have to turn in a log of every journey? How does that part work?

I wouldn’t say anything. How will they ever know? Also, it’s not much he’s done over by and you didn’t deliberately set out for DS to do the majority so I’d just keep quiet.

I also am curious to how they would know OP.

The car has a telematics tag that records every single journey. They will know. You assign each journey to a particular driver.

But how will they know who did the journey?

Can it tell who was driving?

Ah sorry, just seen your update. If this is the case then yes, I’d probably give them a call and have a chat if the policy year will end on over 50% for your DS driving.

If your DW does the rest of the driving now, will it bring it to under 50%? If so, just do that and don’t bother calling them.

Ok help me out it’s been a long week. There are tags that your wife and son wear..have on your keys which identifies who the driver is? Or those tags record the mileage somewhere and someone then assigns it to a driver?

If your wife can manage to get her mileage up to match his in the next month, then I would have thought you'd be okay for renewal. I guess the problem would be if he has an accident while he's in the lead, mileagewise, but if he doesn't drive until she's caught up, that shouldn't be a problem. In future, keep a tally on it through the year so that you can re-balance sooner.

Why not take the car out yourself and drive to John O’Groats and back to redress the balance

It might be cheaper than the extra insurance premium.

😂

Came on to say something similar

I don't understand the tag thing. Canvyou explain please?

We have a marmalade policy and last year my daughter had an accident and she had done way over 50%. They paid out regardless and they never checked the miles. It's been an easy process with them they are a good company ( accident not her fault and they were great at supporting her through documentation etc)

Thank you.

Was your policy the one where it specifies the dd/ds can only do 50%.

I suppose it's because of fronting.

But surely the answer is....to go for a long drive?

We've realised the 50% is technically per month according to one document. A long drive won't fix that.
Another document states it's the total over the policy period.

If it's 50% over the year then isn't it okay for them to be in the lead as long as the year isn't over? You may have a long road trip planned.

Sorry cross posted. So you are meant to watch mileage month to month and decide who drives accordingly I guess? I wonder what happens about the odd month where it's more than 50% then?

Yes it did state over 50% on the policy. I took a new job that required the train for my commute ( central London) within a month of her passing her so she's just naturally done more miles than me.
But the pay out was fine and renewal easy. No hassle at all and no questions. I assumed because I do drive the car they aren't so particular about the percentage

Is this the document?
I was looking at this for DS?

terms-and-conditions-ageas-ppm_v4.pdf

You must not be the main user of the car. Marmalade reserves the right to cancel the policy should you exceed 50% of the total trips of the car within the period of insurance. Marmalade will track the number of trips performed by each driver and will decide to cancel on whether or not exceptional circumstances apply and on the history and your share of the trips in other months.

(And technically, it says "trips", not miles - which is different)

(And technically, it says "trips", not miles - which is different)

This is good to know as I'd be looking for insurance when DS passes. I would do 10 short trips a week for work but he would be more likely to do longer drives at the weekend.

Pretty sure it says over the insurance period. I've just taken it out for DS.

Does anyone know if I'm correct in that as the parent - DS has pay n go - I don't need to download app. None of my drives are showing in his app and also concerned about the 50% thing. Marmalades info is really confusing!

I don't have the app and am not connected to the telematic box

Thanks @socks1107

DH just looked through his emails and found he had an activation code too. So now I'm even more confused!
I'll phone them tomorrow.

It'll be to prevent fronting. Technically if you breach the terms of the policy they can cancel your insurance, which will make it pretty much impossible for ds to get insurance in the future. Just because someone else got away with it, doesn't mean everyone will. As marmalade specialise in young and difficult to insure drivers, i imagine they will be very hot on spotting signs of fronting. Hence the need to log journeys.

So if it's 50% over the term of the policy, dw will need to get a few more miles racked up.