Gutmann pug

With the scoobynet buying power, Which must be massive considering we are all paying at least £500 for our insurance I should imagine. Is it possible to sort something out with the likes of L&V etc with regards to a discount scheme for scoobynet users / members. I stand corrected if this already exists but I havent seen it advertised. If it did exist I would imagine everyone would pay to become scoobynet plus members if we could then get lets say a 10% discount on our insurance premium.

Has this been thought about or looked into??

We had the same sort of thing in the TVR Car Club and it used to work quite well.

please give this your consideration

regards

Gary

MattW

Gary

I'm not sure it would be that great in the long term. Sure one company would get lots of business, but this may expose them to a higher degree of risk in the short term, which would potentially see them withdraw from the market in the long term.

Your best bet to get a good discount is to join the CSMA.

Phil

The SIDC looked into this a little while ago, indeed I approached L&V and was told that we would need 250,000 members to start looking at a scheme

MattW suggestion is a good one and one L&V suggested

Gutmann pug

They must have been trying to put you off Phil. 250,000 people at an average of £500 each is £125 million of business. You know what that is the sort of thing that makes me NOT want to be insured with a company.
As I said with the TVR car club there were approved insurers who gave discounts to card carrying members and I think its fair to say there werent 250,000 of us thats for sure.

I have found with L&V you get a different story depends on which of their emoplyees you speak to. Maybe its worth another try though? Might come out they only need 250 people this time

Phil

Do you have a link for the TVR scheme and I will revist it


Phil

Gutmann pug

NO Phil I dont sorry.

It was through the TVRCC and they as a car club had insurance companies who gave agreed discounts to card carriers. They were more along the classic car line of companies but even so it seemed to work. We must as a group have reasonably strong purchasing power???

wrxmania

What is the CSMA?

Brian.

greasemonkey

Civil Service Motoring Association.

Trouble with making statements like that Gary is that you're only in possession of half of the figures.

Frankly (and drawing on a certain amount of insurance industry insider knowledge), I wouldn't want to join a scheme specifically aimed at Impreza owners, as the premiums involved would almost certainly be higher than I could get going to a common or garden insurance broker.

The nature of insurance is that the risk is, to a certain extent, shared across that insurer's entire customer base. It only makes sense to the underwriter if the total income in terms of premium is greater than the total outgoing in terms of claims and administration.

Our insurance is likely to be cheaper if the collective risk is a customer base that includes loads of Escorts, Focuses, Volvos and Vauxhalls, than it would be if it were shared across a smaller group of Impreza, TVR or Mitsubishi Evo owners.

It's all very well offering an insurer a lot of potential income in premium, but the only thing they'll be interested in is how much risk you're exposing them to. Given that the Impreza is already on the slippery slope that killed the Sierra and Escort Cosworth a decade or so ago*, this is definitely not the time to try and interest an insurer in covering a couple of thousand of these cars en bloc.

*= Used car values drop to the extent where cars can be bought by increasing numbers of young, inexperienced drivers. Accident rates steadily increase, claim rates and losses increase in concertr, cars become ever more difficult and more expensive to insure, used car values drop etc.

Gutmann pug

I think i agree with what your saying grease monkey. I guess the other side of the arguement is that they are already getting our business anyway so why bother giving us a discount?
Maybe the thing to do is boycott them for a year and then come back on mass next year asking for scoobynet discounted premiums ..... although if what you say is true they will be glad to see the back of us and not want us back anyway

There must be loads of us out there though who have never made an own fault claim in our lives who are a good proposition no matter what we drive?

greasemonkey

To an extent. I think the original mistake (or maybe incorrect assumption! ) you made was to assume the insurance industry runs along a similar model to any other business.

It's more like gambling than anything else. As stated above, the insurer, whether a Lloyds "Name", or whoever, gambles that he'll make more than he loses. It's not a fair fight though as the gambler in this case can skew the bet (restricting certain types of driver or car) to keep the odds in his favour.

Lol, frightening thought, but it's not inconcievable.

Trouble is, it doesn't matter! It doesn't matter what your own personal record is, insurance isn't an individual business, unless you're the sort of individual who needs enough insurance to negotiate direct with your own Name. For the likes of thee and me, our individual records count less than those of other drivers of similar age, in similar cars or locations.

MattW

Absolutely GM. It is far more complicated than Premiums - Claims = Profit.

Insurance companies invest some income from premiums in stock, property etc and over the long term this subsidises the claims. Other income is hedged with larger insurance companies\groups, such as Lloyds.