How to stop your car insurer jacking up your premium

Insurers are masters at sneakily jacking up your premium, but there’s one thing you can do to avoid greater costs.

Without fail every year my car insurer jacks up my premium, and for two years running it’s gone up by double digits.

That’s unacceptable.

It rose by 12 per cent last year until I phoned up and complained and ended up getting the policy costs slashed.

Then this month my annual comprehensive car insurance renewal arrived in my inbox and guess what?

It jumped by a hefty 10 per cent, climbing from $703 to $774. That’s an increase seven times the inflation rate of just 1.3 per cent.

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Car insurance customers should never automatically renew their policies. Picture: Supplied

I’d made no claims in the past year that were my fault — the only claim lodged was because a driver ran up my backside when she wasn’t looking.

She paid for the repair costs, not me.

It’s frustrating to see insurers slug customers with exorbitant increases and then hope they won’t lift a finger and just automatically renew their policy notice.

This is the worst thing you can do.

Don’t ever auto-renew because it’s almost guaranteed you’ll be getting ripped off.

In the very friendly renewal letter my insurer sent me they told me they were “delighted” to continue my cover”.

They also wrote: “You can relax because we will automatically renew your policy using your nominated account”.

Well isn’t that fabulous for the insurer? They can sting me with a 10 per cent increase and then kindly deduct the amount from my bank account without me doing anything.

How convenient.

I decided to phone them up and tell them I wasn’t happy.

After getting virtually nowhere with the call centre operator she transferred me through to the “customer solutions team”.

Next time you get your insurance renewal, be sure to look at the summary of changes to the PDS, Sophie Elsworth writes. Picture: iStock

What my insurer had done — if I’d bothered to read through the 30-page product disclosure statement (PDS) - was tell me if I opted not to choose which repairer I would like to go to I could get a discount.
I didn’t even know I could do this. The insurer never told me I could choose my own repairer.

So now they had changed every customer’s policy - in simple terms if you want to be able to choose your insurer you’ll pay more.

My insurer told me this was the most significant change to my policy.

I got this option removed and straight away my policy dropped six per cent down to $731.

But they said that was the best they could do.

So instead I’m going to cop a 4 per cent increase instead of a 10 per cent increase.

I’m OK with that.

But what I’m not OK with is insurers expecting you to read reams of information which most customers’ eyes just glaze over.

There were 10 changes in my PDS which most people would not bother to read.

Spell it out clearly in the cover letter please. Don’t bury it in pages and pages of information.

So the next time you get a renewal, be sure to look at the summary of changes to the PDS and make one phone call.

It may save you a bucketload of cash.

[e-mail]

@sophieelsworth

Originally published as How to stop your car insurer jacking up your premium