[Charlisdad]

Originally Posted by The_Tok'Ra

Insanity, I hope that's for your 340d, not the 320d, but still...

Yes for the 340 with the same mods declared. ( spoiler, splitter and diffuser )

[The_Tok'Ra]

Originally Posted by Charlisdad

Yes for the 340 with the same mods declared. ( spoiler, splitter and diffuser )

Do you think your mods have made a big difference to your premium? I know Quote Me Happy do not allow any mods at all.

[beerglass007]

Originally Posted by Charlisdad

Yes for the 340 with the same mods declared. ( spoiler, splitter and diffuser )

I'm not sure they need declaring on a M340 as they come as standard, I get their m-performance but the car comes with them already which makes me wonder

[The_Tok'Ra]

Originally Posted by beerglass007

I'm not sure they need declaring on a M340 as they come as standard, I get their m-performance but the car comes with them already which makes me wonder

That's a fair point. My car was not spec'd with the splitter, spoiler, defuser from factory, but I'd expect adding them would up my premium considerably.

But I'm not even going to go there, My premium is high enough as it is, thank you very much!

[Charlisdad]

Originally Posted by The_Tok'Ra

That's a fair point. My car was not spec'd with the splitter, spoiler, defuser from factory, but I'd expect adding them would up my premium considerably.

But I'm not even going to go there, My premium is high enough as it is, thank you very much!

They were on the car when I bought it but must have been added by a previous owner, ( I bought it used). The original advert shows the car without so obviously not standard and so should be declared. They did make a considerable difference as I got cheaper quotes when I “forgot” to declare them.

[Rhino at Work]

Well here we are again, that time of year.

My renewal from Aviva for the start of May came through with a .... wait for it... 61% increase

This year the best comparable quote I got was with the AA just under £200 cheaper.

Incase it helps anyone I have two tips from this process 1. Go via the Moneysavingexpert comparison tool as it was much better than the AA directly; and 2. Play around with the excess once you get to the main AA site as I found that reducing from £500 to £350 made no difference to the premium.

[beerglass007]

Originally Posted by Rhino at Work

Well here we are again, that time of year.

My renewal from Aviva for the start of May came through with a .... wait for it... 61% increase

This year the best comparable quote I got was with the AA just under £200 cheaper.

Incase it helps anyone I have two tips from this process 1. Go via the Moneysavingexpert comparison tool as it was much better than the AA directly; and 2. Play around with the excess once you get to the main AA site as I found that reducing from £500 to £350 made no difference to the premium.

I had an interesting time with my insurance renewal last week

I've got the carbon boot spoiler, valence and sides. I've always told the insurance company that these were non standard because they weren't fitted at the factory but the dealership.

An example = BMW insurance say this isn't a modified car, but others say it is.

Admiral in 2022 with all my mods quoted £380, in 2023 it was £880 and 2024 they quoted £1200. But said they had changed their policy on mods and its not technically a after market mod.

If you play around with gocompare sites, adding the mods reduces the amount of companies who will insure the car, when adding all 3 mods I only get 6 companies who will quote and all over £1200

When I spoke to a few they asked if I added a rear valance, well technically the M340i has a rear valence already and I'm NOT adding one, the same with the spoiler. Only the sides have been added as extras, so told I would only need to mention that. When getting a quote with only 1 mod on the car I now get tons of companies and insurance was £600

It's pretty much a grey area and not one single insurance company is the same or even when speaking with them directly, you get different answers to the same question. Ok if someone rips the carbon boot spoiler off the car they might only replace with a standard M340i spoiler. But with a £500 excess nobody is going to claim for that

[Charlisdad]

Originally Posted by beerglass007

I had an interesting time with my insurance renewal last week

I've got the carbon boot spoiler, valence and sides. I've always told the insurance company that these were non standard because they weren't fitted at the factory but the dealership.

An example = BMW insurance say this isn't a modified car, but others say it is.

Admiral in 2022 with all my mods quoted £380, in 2023 it was £880 and 2024 they quoted £1200. But said they had changed their policy on mods and its not technically a after market mod.

If you play around with gocompare sites, adding the mods reduces the amount of companies who will insure the car, when adding all 3 mods I only get 6 companies who will quote and all over £1200

When I spoke to a few they asked if I added a rear valance, well technically the M340i has a rear valence already and I'm NOT adding one, the same with the spoiler. Only the sides have been added as extras, so told I would only need to mention that. When getting a quote with only 1 mod on the car I now get tons of companies and insurance was £600

It's pretty much a grey area and not one single insurance company is the same or even when speaking with them directly, you get different answers to the same question. Ok if someone rips the carbon boot spoiler off the car they might only replace with a standard M340i spoiler. But with a £500 excess nobody is going to claim for that

Exactly the same scenario for me end of March. Only 6 would insure me and quotemehappy were the best. I was told the same about spoiler being there originally so removed from my quote, Signed up, paid my deposit then got an email cancelling my policy. they don't insure cars with ay mods and my spoiler wasn't the one from factory so a mod!. Ended up with Admiral and another £150 uplift on last years quote.

[Bianchi Dave]

I've been toying with idea of fitting the M Performance roof spoiler (G21) and front splitter. Already have the sideskirts and rear carbon diffuser and the black grille as another mod, so 3 in total.
It's the extra in insurance every year that's putting me off fitting the remaining parts of the body kit!
At last renewal (currently with Aviva) I had hoped it would have been cheaper to just select 'body kit' as one mod, but alas they seemed wise to that one 🙄

[TuffLittleUnit]

Originally Posted by Rhino at Work

Incase it helps anyone I have two tips from this process 1. Go via the Moneysavingexpert comparison tool as it was much better than the AA directly; and 2. Play around with the excess once you get to the main AA site as I found that reducing from £500 to £350 made no difference to the premium.

This is the route I took back in December and got a big saving via Hastings but was dismayed when I saw the valuation of the vehicle - it was £6000 less than the value used by Admiral (my insurer at the time) and others.

When I called Hastings they explained that it was the comparison website that had provided the vehicle valuation. Hastings were great - upped the cover to the correct valuation and gave me a REFUND (about £35 IIRC). A few days later I got an additional £85 refund as they said they'd not calculated the discount on a linked buildings and contents insurance policy.

Anyway - key point here is that it was the comparison site that had undervalued the vehicle. Can't help but wonder if this was an attempt to lower the premium but I suspect I'd have been in trouble if the car had been a write-off.

[HeebieJeebies]

Originally Posted by TuffLittleUnit

Anyway - key point here is that it was the comparison site that had undervalued the vehicle. Can't help but wonder if this was an attempt to lower the premium but I suspect I'd have been in trouble if the car had been a write-off.

I used the confused comparison site for the G22, you could adjust the value of the car in the relevant section, easily missed, I went back after checking all the details with all the detail boxes having an edit function. My new insurance was quoted as half the price of direct line, my now former insurance company (Aviva was the best for me)

[alFR]

Originally Posted by beerglass007

Ok if someone rips the carbon boot spoiler off the car they might only replace with a standard M340i spoiler. But with a £500 excess nobody is going to claim for that

That's not really the problem though: the problem is that if you total the car in a crash, they send an assessor out and they notice something undeclared which they consider a mod they might refuse to pay out on the policy (and even cancel it) which means you are (a) massively out of pocket and (b) good luck getting insurance afterwards as you'll need to tick the "have you ever had insurance cancelled or declined" box when applying for any subsequent policy.

In the current climate they'll do anything to get out of paying a claim. The water is muddied further (as you point out) because all the insurers differ on what they consider to be mods: some want factory-installed optional extras declared, some don't, some will consider things like PPF a mod and want it listed on the policy, others don't. The only safe way nowadays is to ask whether anything that's non-standard on the car needs to be listed on the policy or not and get them to confirm (preferably in writing).

[The_Tok'Ra]

Originally Posted by alFR

That's not really the problem though: the problem is that if you total the car in a crash, they send an assessor out and they notice something undeclared which they consider a mod they might refuse to pay out on the policy (and even cancel it) which means you are (a) massively out of pocket and (b) good luck getting insurance afterwards as you'll need to tick the "have you ever had insurance cancelled or declined" box when applying for any subsequent policy.

In the current climate they'll do anything to get out of paying a claim. The water is muddied further (as you point out) because all the insurers differ on what they consider to be mods: some want factory-installed optional extras declared, some don't, some will consider things like PPF a mod and want it listed on the policy, others don't. The only safe way nowadays is to ask whether anything that's non-standard on the car needs to be listed on the policy or not and get them to confirm (preferably in writing).

It had never occurred to me that PPF could be considered a "mod". Thanks for highlighting that. I agree, insurers will try anything to avoid having to pay out on a policy.

[HeebieJeebies]

Originally Posted by alFR

In the current climate they'll do anything to get out of paying a claim.

Not just the current climate, they’ve been doing that all my 44years of driving

[alFR]

Originally Posted by The_Tok'Ra

It had never occurred to me that PPF could be considered a "mod". Thanks for highlighting that. I agree, insurers will try anything to avoid having to pay out on a policy.

Depends on the insurer I think (helpfully). Admiral don't need it listing on the policy, for example, but I've read a few stories where the insurer has either refused to pay for new PPF after a repair (reasonable IMHO), declined to offer cover for cars with PPF (justification being that removing PPF to do a repair raises their costs) or refused claims / cancelled cover on cars with undeclared PPF.

Originally Posted by HeebieJeebies

Not just the current climate, they’ve been doing that all my 44years of driving

True. I think they are worse now though and the fact that they all have different requirements (and you often get told different things by different people when you call them, e.g. the customer service person for my current insurer told me over the phone when I was taking out the policy that factory options didn't need declaring, but when the cover booklet came through it turned out they did) means you just can't take any chances at all. The problem is compounded by the fact that you don't have any record of a phone conversation with them: I've taken to doing the online text chat with mine where possible and recording the section of the screen with the chat window in it (the function to send you a transcript of the chat afterwards has never worked, conveniently for them). I don't trust them an inch.