Curiosity
Rhys Barker car insurance £1.2m, Corsa Cost £1,400
Rhys Barker car insurance £1.2m, Corsa Cost £1,400
Are auto insurers looking to protect their bottom line by driving away younger more accident prone drivers? Some would say yes and among those would be 27-year-old Rhys Barker of Manchester, England. Barker is the owner of a Vauxhall Corsa C automobile made by German automaker Opel.
It is a super mini car and is well designed. For his part, Barker is a young man, but he has a clean driving record with no accidents or infractions. So you would think he would get a competitive quote from Zenith Auto Insurance. Think again, after entering in his personal information and automobile details, he received an online quote of £1,165,977.75 for an annual premium.
He said: “I went through all the questions and then the quote came up for £1,165, 977.75. I was convinced it must be a mistake, so I called them up on their helpline. They didn’t even seem to be shocked by it.
“They checked it for me and then said it was right.”
His 2004 Corsa is worth only £1,400. Perplexed by the quote, Barker phoned Zenith to speak with a representative who straight faced affirmed the annual premium and offered monthly installments of £104,000 if that would fit better into his budget.
Note: when insurance people make straight-faced statements about absurd facts, it’s quite likely they’ve been trained to respond that way. Barker believes he has been unfairly profiled by the insurer due to his age.
He said: ‘I’m convinced they were just trying to price me out of buying insurance with them but it’s a ridiculous way of doing it. I’d love to know how they would have reacted if I’d just agreed to it – although with a car worth less than £1,500 it was never going to be likely.’
Looking at the annual premium vs. the car value it would be hard to counter his assertion.
Gary Humphreys, group underwriting director at Markerstudy Group, which runs Zenith, tells the Mail: ‘The price Mr Barker was quoted reflects that we have ‘declined’ to provide cover, as we would not expect a customer to pay such a high premium.
‘This is not a case of pricing customers out of the market but quoting on the risks that are within our rating parameters and declining if they are outside.
‘Without the detail we are unable to tell why Zenith was unable to provide cover at the time. We are aware this website has changed the way it quotes since Mr Barker used it, so that if a quote is over £10,000 it ‘declines’ rather than quotes a high premium.’
A spokesman from Admiral Group plc told the Daily Mail its premium is based on statistics. He said quotes change because of factors like marital status or postcode because they reflect the risk taken on by an insurance company.
Source material:
Driver, 27, is quoted £1.2 MILLION to insure a ten-year-old Corsa worth just £1,400 (or if he can’t pay it all up front, he can pay £104,000 a month)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383179/Motorist-27-quoted-1-2million-insure-year-old-Vauxhall-Corsa-worth-1-400-t-afford-told-pay-104-000-month.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
Living in Salford Quays and looking to insure a Corsa? That’ll be £1.2m a year please
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/living-salford-quays-looking-insure-5431442