Bike insurance

Mrs W has bought a CG 125 as her first bike, we were hunting through insurance quotes to see what sort of quotes for her as the main rider and me as a second named rider.
Cheapest £56 from someone I’d never heard of
Dearest £198 also from someone I’d never heard of. The quote we’ve chosen to go with is Bennets at £144, it’s towards the higher end but includes Recovery, legal cover, helmets and leathers and personal injury, most of the others had a lot of these as “extras” and by the time you added them in they were £150 +.
Interestingly RAC nor AA quotes included recovery??
I’ve been with Bennets 20-30 years ago and they were ok back then, anyone had good or bad experiences with them more recently?

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Bennets were £300 plus for the chop. Devitt was £74 this year (went down from £98 last year) including agreed value and all the modifications/alterations. Didn’t try to sell me any of the add ons either. I do all my bikes seperately with them now so no admin charges for selling, buying new ones, changes etc. Multi bike was just not an option when the quotes were into several hundreds of squids.

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I think you only know how good an insurance company is when you have to make a claim. Fortunately in 20 odd years I’ve not had to do this on a bike.

They all seem to charge excessive ‘admin’ fees for any minor change that you want to make mid-term. On one occasion with a car I wanted to cancel early as I sold it. The admin fee was greater than the refund so they wanted a payment to cancel it! I told them not to bother and I’ll just let it run in that case. They chose to write off the balance owed and just cancel it.

I recently changed a policy over to my new bonnie. 60 quid it cost over a wee honda 125 I have laying in the garage. 35 of that was the admin fee!

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I’ve been with Peter James for years, classic bikes with agreed values which is vital for any motorcycle that appreciates in value year on year. Was £72 a year fully comp for my Laverda for example. They don’t give a no claims bonus but then they don’t increase the premium every year either, when my Moto Guzzi 750s was stolen they paid me the agreed value no quibbling. I’ve stuck with them for the Bonneville (£98 pa fully comp). As i said, i just wondered if anyone had any recent experience of Bennets, good or bad.

I’ve gone through Bennett’s before and they were fine as brokers go. The insurer will be some other company.

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Just started another new policy with swinton via comparison.
The first thing they sent me was ‘How did we do?’ So I ignored it. They then sent me another within a couple of days, ‘how did we do?’ Well actually you did NOTHING AT ALL, but to empty my bank account. What do they honestly think as they want good ratings for no input?

On another note I too had to pay £35 to cancel an insurance 2/3 term, what??? Where’s me refund more like?

My experience this week has been with car insurance but the same principles apply.

I changed cars and insurers as I found a better quote. The broker asked for the usual no claims bonus proof from my previous insurer and, something I haven’t seen before, a copy of the DVLA licence summary, showing entitlements and endorsements.

The old broker’s customer portal wasn’t accepting my definitely correct credentials. I think I know my old reg number, date-of-birth and postcode. After calling them and waiting on hold for 20 minutes (have you noticed that everyone is experiencing a ‘high volume of calls’ these days?) I received the letter immediately via email, so job done there.

I dispatched the required docs to the new broker and a reply was waiting in my mailbox this morning saying my premium has changed. Uh-oh… But no, it turns out it matters that I have more no-claims (10 years) than I originally stated (because the dropdown options only went to ‘9’) and they adjustment was a refund of £27. Happy days. They generouly waived the £50 mid-term adjustment fee, which saved me sending off a snippy email to their customer service department.

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Been with Either Footman James or Peter James for years but this time round as I no longer have classics, I went with Swinton, £58 fully comp for the T100 and covered to ride other bikes. I too had the pestering gmails.

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