ronp wrote:

believing they were specialists in specific fields....especially LR's as they advertise on here.
However as nice as she was, the 'specialist' didn't have much knowledge in the kit I was declaring as extras e.g. RAI, sump plate, sliders, twin electrics, solar panel, etc etc.
It left me concerned if everything I declared and fully explained, would actually be covered?
Absolutely you'd be covered, we list everything you say and have recorded telephone calls, our staff are specialists and some will be more specialist in certain fields such as kit car, modified, high performance, American imports and of course, 4x4. We do however all have a knowledge of the specialist market as a whole, and it is possible you may have spoken to someone newer to the team or in our overflow rather than the part of the furniture folk like myself, we all start somewhere and its certainly a job you learn new things everyday, no conversationis the same and im 8 years in, but our recruitment process targets motor enthusiasts as a whole. We have 40 staff in specialist and additional in our overflow teams for when our lines get busy - this is to reduce call wait times.

I've just moved house and in the process of advising everyone of my change of address, A-Plan advise they need to charge me £59 extra because my vehicle is now located in a different area.
All well and good, however in changing my summer open-top runabout and the wife's car, none of these insurance companies wanted more money for the address change!
Insurers rate postcodes differently based on statistics, what may be low risk for one may not be for another, this is judged on both national statistics and data and the insurers own claim data for that area based on their own policy holders in that area, for example one insurer may insure 10 people in that postcode and another only 2, if all 12 had a claim then the insurer with 10 policy holders will see that as a higher risk than the one who only had 2 claims to pay out for.
In addition to this some insurers (many of them) charge a mid-term fee for any changes whatever they may be so this may be the case, without knowing who you are i cannot look at the breakdown of costs specifically. But what i can say is the full £59 fee is not entirely an A-Plan/Howden charge as we do not have a fee of that amount, for a midterm change we would not physically be able to charge that amount as us, so some or all will have been insurer charge.

gareth71 wrote:

Another ex-customer of A-Plan here.

Insured with them last year - £299 fully-comp, including legal expenses cover. Their renewal quote for the same policy this year - £697!!

Once I'd stopped laughing I ran my details through the Money Saving Expert comparison site, and got loads of quotes which beat A-Plan (or Howdens, as they're apparently now called) by a long way. Ended up going with Hastings Direct on one of their standard policies - slightly lower excess than my old policy, increased annual mileage, and a premium of £286.

A-Plan, or Howdens, or whoever they are now, clearly aren't interested in insuring us Disco drivers any more. Maybe it's time to end their sponsorship arrangement with this site? I certainly don't think disco3.co.uk should be promoting a company who clearly aren't interested in getting our business.

Hi

Also had a sharp increase of premium with A plan

My renewal went from £450 to £1,100, , indeed same as others where nothing had changed , did call the office and was also advised about keyless entry issues and one of there insurers wouldn’t cover land rovers anymore so that’s why costs were a lot higher

Knew it wasn’t A plans fault seeing the usual broker wasn’t available anymore

Checked on compare and found a quote which I accepted with Hastings direct , then added extras below under Hastings premier for £520

Premier cover included

Breakdown (Upgraded) (with
RAC Breakdown)
• Motor Legal Cover

Additional cover
Breakdown - Home (with RAC
Breakdown)
• Key protection

At the end of the day wished I could have stayed with them but alas price increase was to much of a difference

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

  

A-Plan Insurance wrote:

Apologies we couldn't help you gstuart but appreciate the feedback, insurers do adjust their criteria all the time, so fingers and toes crossed we can come back down for you next year. Will say... you won't see many other brokers online at midnight I don't sleep

Indeed massive respect to being online at midnight,

Many thks and do understand , alas it was a shock with the £650 increase , was with u for 7 x years along with 12 x year NCB , admittedly do like to stay loyal to a company but alas this was too much of an increase to accept

That would be great if ur able to get it back down , will u automatically send out a quote next year to me or will I have to apply plse , my cover will expire 19th Oct 2024

Thks again for everything that you’ve done and look forward to see what u can do next year

All the best and have a great weekend

Gary