Car insurance for DS 19 any tips?

[ELLENUT]

Does anyone have any tips for car insurance for my DS (19 soon)? He has just passed his test so now on the look out for a car & the most reasonable insurance.

Will it be better to go with a black box or not? How does it work, once you pay, I know you can get money back if drive well but can you also be required to pay more? Also are they reliable?

Its a complete minefield compared to when I passed... they want £600 to add him to our Corsa

[Dr.JumbaJookiba]

Try Direct Line Drive Plus, my DD is with them after doing a year with Hastings Direct smart miles. I didn't like the way the Hasting's box scored braking and was glad when her year was up.

Read all online reviews of whoever you are considering, some get very bad reviews and while some are clearly from disgruntled bad drivers there are some scary stories of parents forced into cancelling policies when scores are disputed.

Also, make sure you consider the curfew hours carefully, they can be a nightmare if your DS has a late evening job.

[400ixl]

Adding additional mature drivers with good histories helps reduce the premium. So parents for example.

Be honest with the mileage, don't under estimate but also if it will be low also try a higher figure as sometimes too low can raise the price.

Also, if it is to be used to go to work or education don't forget you need commute cover as well.

As for a black box, I have found as many policies within a few pounds for my DD that do not require one. So have a good look and the comparison sites and see if you need to have a policy with one.

How the charge for black box policy differs by company. Many are reward based where you earn discounts but they don't charge more, some do. They also have clauses usually allowing them to cancel the policy. Quite rarely happens though, so as long as the driver is sensible.

Obviously the car chosen also effects the price and who will quote, so try finding some example cars on line and putting their registrations into comparison sites and see what options the return.

Good luck.

[123]

Originally Posted by ELLENUT

Does anyone have any tips for car insurance for my DS (19 soon)? He has just passed his test so now on the look out for a car & the most reasonable insurance.

Will it be better to go with a black box or not? How does it work, once you pay, I know you can get money back if drive well but can you also be required to pay more? Also are they reliable?

Its a complete minefield compared to when I passed... they want £600 to add him to our Corsa

See more...

We did similar with our daughter over a year ago (she was 17 at the time).

You need to choose a low powered car, that is cheap to replace and isn't popular (so rules out Fiat 500 etc as they are considered cool by teens)

We had a Dacia which we bought for DS (so car in her name), the car was then insured by her (both of us as named drivers) it was £1150 with a black box. We'd have needed the surname Bezos or Zuckerberg to not have a black box.

It was one whereby there was no curfew (curfew ones are a little cheaper but then you can't use car between 11pm and 6am for instance - which is fine until you need a train station drop off first thing etc). Also it didn't affect the cost during the year instead good driving gave a few pence per day (max 90p) off the next renewal.

After a year of driving with the Black Box we switched to Admiral and got a year (no black box) for £550 (which after Quidco and a few other incentives came down to an actual outlay of £460)

As for adding them to your car, we looked at that (as she wouldn't have been the amin driver of our car as we only had the one at the time) and it was £950 to add her so £600 sounds cheap

[danisleigh]

My son had Hastings smart miles for the first year. He didn’t get money back but apparently your driving score staying good means a better renewal price. As it happens DS shopped around for the second year as he didn’t want a black box anymore. He paid £1030 for the first year with a black box then about £800ish for the second year with no black box.

[Ruthy1604]

We did a multi car policy with Admiral. We found that by adding DS on, it wasn't horrendously expensive, and no black box required. I still remember it being £800 ish for a VW polo (old).

[123]

Simplifying the whole discussion if you are insuring a car for the first time and you are under 20 a premium below £1000 is very good.

Even if you are just adding a kid to your own car policy (as you know they won't drive it often, so are a named driver not a main driver - not suggesting anyone "fronts" {google "insurance fronting"}) after a change in underwriting policies about 3 years ago almost all insurers calculate premiums as if the kid was the main drive anyway (because too many people lied and said it was their car but in reality only the kid ever drove it)

[mickey house]

We've used confused.com for our son's car insurance and couldn't find it any cheaper with other insurance companies or search sites.

[Smilesonfaces]

My son is insured with Woop. He has a black box but has had no issues with it. There are no mileage or curfew restrictions with the, unlike some companies around. It is likely that by including a parent on the policy as named driver will also reduce the premium. I would agree that anything under £1000 for a young driver would be fairly good.

[123]

Adding an older driver can be counter productive to a black box policy. Yes we bring down the initial policy fee due to lower risk, but our ingrained bad habits trash their "driving score" so they don't get such a big good driver discount on renewal.

We stopped driving DDs car as everytime we used it she got a "bad driving warning" email the next day