Nationwide Flex Plus accounts, a question and a caution.

[Brian Kirby]

Those with the above accounts will know that they come with a suite of insurances including worldwide travel insurance and UK and European breakdown insurance.

I'm currently trying to arrange insurance for our car, and also have one of the above accounts.  I also know a number of members also have similar and rely on these for their motorhome.

The problem I have encountered is that neither of the above insurances deals with the need to repatriate the vehicle from abroad if the driver is ill/incapacitated, and no-one else can/will drive it.  The travel insurance will repatriate if necessary the driver and or passengers if they fall ill, and the breakdown insurance will repatriate the vehicle from abroad of it has broken down and cannot be driven.  However, if it is the driver who has broken down, leaving the vehicle with no-one to drive it, neither policy covers the eventuality.  

This is compounded by few (none I have yet discovered!) of the car insurance companies makes provision for this eventuality either.  When we had our vans I insured through Comfort, whose policies are underwritten by AVIVA, and the facility to get the vehicle repatriated in the event of the driver being unable to drive it was solved by a relief driver being dispatched to wherever to drive it, and its passenger/s and incapacitated driver back to UK.  The best car insurance I've been able to find is, oddly, AVIVA, but no such facility exists in their policies.

So, the above question is: has anyone a car insurance policy that includes repatriation cover for their car if the driver can't drive?

The above caution is: do check very carefully - if you are relying on your Flex Plus insurances - that you van insurance makes provision for recovering the van if the driver can't drive it.  If it doesn't, and you become unable to drive, you'll be just a bit sunk!

If your favourite travelling companion is happy driving your van abroad fine, they can take over the driving - but if they are not a named driver, or can/would not drive it abroad, then check VERY carefully, or your next trip abroad could prove VERY expensive! ☹️  Similar in UK, but less problematic and costly to fix.

[John52]

Good point

This is what I was trying to tell pelmetman when he was proudly showing photos of his barbecue in Calpe with burgers that were still red in the middle.  Something like that could knock them both out then who would drive the van?

[John52]

Oh and I used to get van insurance through Nationwide till I found out it was cheaper to go to the insurance company direct.  Also cheaper than the comparison sites I tried.

I only have the insurance I have to have to comply with the law.  Don't even have home insurance because I can afford to pay it myself.  But it would be nice to have a number to ring for breakdown etc

[laimeduck]

At present we use Nationwide because it suits us and it is a good product ... for us now.

Brians's caveat ref repatriation does not apply to us because both my wife and I can drive the Benimar. If we both went down with something that would perhaps be another matter?  The Benimar would have to go into storage until we could collect it? I think that is an unlikely risk we will have to accept. 

Still but and however ... just checking their breakdown policy wording I find that the Nationwide AA breakdown DOES NOT cover my motorbike .... they exclude machines under 200cc and mine is 125cc!

So I have been riding around for 10 years with no breakdown!

So IF you are relying on Nationwide for breakdown cover AND you have a scooter or motorbike under 200cc - you are not covered.

As Brian says ...."Check very carefully"

Jeremy

[Brian Kirby]

If anyone wants the full wording, look in the insurance booklet for "Section D,  "European Breakdown Assistance Cover and Limitations", (p 23), and then turn to p26, "Section 7 - Vehicle recovery to the territory (i.e. the UK) or onward to original destination" in the right hand, "What is not covered", column (the heading of which, unhelpfully, appears only on page 23!), items 5 and 6, which state:

"5. Recovery costs for your vehicle if nobody in your party is fit to drive."
"6. Repatriation costs for you or your party if nobody in your party is fit to drive." 

It could be more clearly stated and, having stumbled upon it, I had to re-read it before the penny dropped and I realised what it meant!  "Fit to drive" struck me as an odd expression, so I 'phoned the Flex Plus bit of the AA to get them to verify that it really means "nobody in your party is fit and legally able to drive the vehicle".

Put more bluntly, where neither you nor anyone else in your party can legally drive your vehicle we will not pay or contribute to the cost of repatriating it to the UK .

Edited December 10, 2023 by Brian Kirby

[colin]

Was it on this forum that a member removed their wife from insurance because she wouldn't want to drive the van back any great distance.

[breakaleg]

Also consider, if I were taken ill and flown back home, my wife wouldn't want to drive the van home if I were critically unwell.

She would want to be flown home with me.

Pete 

[Derek Uzzell]

Comfort Insurance advice here:
 

https://www.comfort-insurance.co.uk/blog/additional-drivers

[John52]

1 hour ago, breakaleg said:

Also consider, if I were taken ill and flown back home, my wife wouldn't want to drive the van home if I were critically unwell.

She would want to be flown home with me.

Pete 

What if breakaleg were to break a leg?

Didn't need to be flown home but not able to drive? 

[Brian Kirby]

21 hours ago, colin said:

Was it on this forum that a member removed their wife from insurance because she wouldn't want to drive the van back any great distance.

Possibly.  We certainly did just that because all of our vans have been LHD, because Carole had never driven on the right, and because she was a bit intimidated by the size of the vans.  On advice, we never included her as a named driver, which meant she could not legally drive the vans.  Then, if circumstances demanded, we could have added her as a named driver and paid any extra premium by 'phone.  Never happened, but the possibility existed if needed.

But trying to absorb LHD, drive on right, and cope with large vehicle all in one hit, would have been a big ask, and would hardly have resulted in a relaxed driver!  So probably just as well.  😄 

[Derek Uzzell]

Postings in this 2019 Out&AboutLive thread revealed that several motorhome-owning forum participants (including me) had deliberately chosen to not have their wife as a named driver on their motorhome insurance policy.

https://forums.outandaboutlive.co.uk/topic/45973-motorhome-insurance/

[crocs]

I once asked my insurance company how much less it would be if my wife was not a named driver but I was told it would actually cost more. Their reasoning was that it would be a good 'backstop'. So, insurance companies do differ and, as usual, it pays to read the policy.

But the 'repatriation' issue trumps that and it might be time to drop her as she never drives.

[John52]

If you get a quote by putting your details into the online form you can try it both ways - with and without a named second driver.

PS: Just don't ask Direct Line for third party only cover like I did.  Their Artificial Intelligence or whatever took that to mean I was a risk-taker and on that basis refused to insure me (despite having a clean licence, no criminal record, parked on my own drive in a low crime postcode, over 50 years NCD and never made any insurance claim in my life)  So I had to have Comprehensive.  If it was left to me I would ban comprehensive motor insurance because it might concentrate people's minds to drive more carefully if they had to pay for their damage.

Edited December 12, 2023 by John52

[Derek Uzzell]

This link refers to 3rd-party car insurance and highlights that the cost of the premium can be higher than 3rd-party, fire and theft cover, or much higher than comprehensive cover.

https://www.confused.com/car-insurance/third-party#:~:text=Why is third-party insurance,likely to make a claim.

Regarding your posting's last sentence, plenty of vehicle accidents involve damage caused by an unidentified driver or by vandalism and, if the owner of the damaged vehicle just has 3rd-party insurance, they will need to pick up the tab for repairs despite not being in any way responsible for the accident.

(This forum's history proves without a shadow of a doubt that you are prepared to take risks yourself as so many of your posts have invited summary deletion due to their 'provocative' content. Clearly you are aware of this and have deliberately chosen to accept that risk. So perhaps Direct Line's AI is a lot smarter than you give it credit for. 😀)

[John52]

I'd be grateful for any intelligence, Artificial or otherwise 😉

Edited December 12, 2023 by John52

[Derek Uzzell]

Obviously I've no idea what data you provided to Direct Line when you contacted them, but I got this when I asked for a quote

 This was for a Third Party, Fire and Theft (TPF&T) policy (Direct Line do not offer basic Third Party cover) for my car (a 2021 Hyundai i20) and - although I did not provide valid phone/email information - the rest of the  data I entered was correct.

I don't know what criteria the Direct Line system applies to quote requests, but I believe your assumption that you were refused because they somehow considered you a 'risk taker' is very unlikely to be the case.

If I was refused for the 'risk taker' reason,  if I sought a Direct Line quote for Comprehensive cover and provided exactly the same details, it would be logical for my application to also be refused. However, when I asked for a Comprehensive quote,  I was provided with prices.

You could ask Direct Line exactly why they refused to provide you with a TPF&T quote, but I suspect they either won't, or can't, tell you.

[John52]

After Direct Line had refused me cover I got a phone call from a broker who specialises in high risk boy racers etc.

She told me Direct Line had passed her my details, and eventually disclosed Direct Line had rejected me because I asked for Third Party Only.  So I went back to Direct Line, filled in the online form again asking for comprehensive cover  and they gave me a quote.  But their quote was double my renewal quote with LV, so I wondered if my asking Direct Line for third party cover had put a marker against me. 

Looking at your link I suppose Insurance Companies will no doubt have looked at their claims statistics and found the average third party only customer claims more.  Maybe because they have been refused Comprehensive cover?  In any case, pushing them into taking out Comprehensive Cover doesn't seem likely to make them safer drivers?  Just the opposite I would have thought, since we would be paying for their recklessness.

I'm aware of the financial risk of having third party only cover.  But with the loss of NCD and subsequent higher quotes it probably wouldn't be worth making a claim.  And it would be a lot quicker and simpler to pay it myself than claim it from an insurer.

If you can afford to pay it yourself it must be cheaper, on average, than taking out insurance.  They have to add their profit, administration cost, the cost of reckless drivers and fake claims, and dare I say all the Government's stealth taxes like Insurance Premium Tax etc  - but I have to be careful here because Globebuster is  stalking me ready to pounce if I post anything he can say is political 😉

[John52]

13 hours ago, Derek Uzzell said:

Obviously I've no idea what data you provided to Direct Line when you contacted them, but I got this when I asked for a quote

 This was for a Third Party, Fire and Theft (TPF&T) policy (Direct Line do not offer basic Third Party cover) for my car (a 2021 Hyundai i20) and - although I did not provide valid phone/email information - the rest of the  data I entered was correct.

I don't know what criteria the Direct Line system applies to quote requests, but I believe your assumption that you were refused because they somehow considered you a 'risk taker' is very unlikely to be the case.

If I was refused for the 'risk taker' reason,  if I sought a Direct Line quote for Comprehensive cover and provided exactly the same details, it would be logical for my application to also be refused. However, when I asked for a Comprehensive quote,  I was provided with prices.

You could ask Direct Line exactly why they refused to provide you with a TPF&T quote, but I suspect they either won't, or can't, tell you.

IIRC that was the same message I got when I asked Direct Line to quote me for for Third Party.  I'm thinking the reason they thought we were risk takers is because we asked for Third Party Cover.  Because when we asked for Comprehensive Cover they gave us a quote.

[Derek Uzzell]

It's very hard to imagine how Direct Lines's system (however smart) might class you (or I) as a 'risk taker', given your stated driving record or mine.

In view of the follow-up you received from a specialist broker, it seems more likely that - despite DL's system offering the capability to seek a TPF&T quote (I assume you wanted Fire & Theft cover too) - the reality may be that DL's system will refuse all such requests and offload them to a broker. I'm sure DL would not confirm if that were so, but if other forum-members requested TPF&T insurance quotes from DL and all of those requests were refused (and there were a broker follow-up) that would be telling circumstantial evidence.

This link may be of interest

https://www.insuredaily.co.uk/blog/car-insurance/third-party-insurance

Since I started owning and driving 4-wheeled vehicles in 1964 I've always comprehensively insured them. I have had two car accidents (both in the 1990s) involving insurance claims. The first was when my car was rear-ended at a roundabout - the culprit did not stop and repairs cost about £600. The second was more complex, another rear-ending, my car a near write-off and the driver of the builder's van that hit me subsequently discovering he was uninsured (prosecuted, 11 points on driving licence, large fine, went bankrupt.) I might well be financially better off nowadays to have opted for 3rd-part insurance not comprehensive, but that's using hindsight and - again using hindsight - there's no doubt that I'd be a lot better off nowadays if I'd bought Bitcoin.

(No real need to be concerned about Globebuster (or Globebuster1 as now known)  when you are so high on the forum moderators' watch-list  😀)

[John52]

1 hour ago, Derek Uzzell said:

(No real need to be concerned about Globebuster (or Globebuster1 as now known)

I'm not so sure

He is very ambitious and wants to become a Moderator 😉

[Derek Uzzell]

Your  penultimate posting, that went even further off-topic than the Direct Line discussion, provoked Moderator Chop (not by me!)

(You could always volunteer to be a Moderator, sort of poacher becoming gamekeeper.)

[Cattwg]

Yes. I took my wife off our motorhome insurance several years ago. She would be so nervous driving it, especially on the Continent that it would simply be unsafe.  Cattwg 🙂

[peedee]

I presume there would nothing to stop you adding an emergency driver to the existing policy should this become necessary.

peedee

[gdf]

Whilst people are checking their insurance it might be worth checking what your Breakdown Insurance regards as a breakdown.

I got a shock in the summer when I discovered that the breakdown insurance through Comfort states that if the van can move it isn't a breakdown. So brake issues, limp mode etc you can ..... and sort it yourself!

dave

[John52]

On 13/12/2023 at 08:41, Derek Uzzell said:

it seems more likely that - despite DL's system offering the capability to seek a TPF&T quote (I assume you wanted Fire & Theft cover too) - the reality may be that DL's system will refuse all such requests and offload them to a broker. I'm sure DL would not confirm if that were so,

I'm sure of it because the broker eventually told me so, and DL later offered me comprehensive cover.

When she first rang I knew such a broker wouldn't give me a lower quote than I got direct from LV so I said 'No Thank You' and hung up.  But she must have been having a quiet day because she rang back and persuaded me to let her try. I suppose it could have been a black mark against her if, having been given a lead, she hadn't tried to convert it into a sale.

When I told her my renewal quote she realised she wasn't going to get a sale and had nothing to lose, and it was only then we got into a general conversation about why I would ban comprehensive insurance, and it was only then she let me know thats why Direct Line refused me flat out. 

So I was then able to get a quote direct from Direct Line after asking for comprehensive.