It pays to never auto renew any of your insurance policies

WHEN you receive an insurance renewal in the mail this is exactly what you should do to save money.

NEVER, ever just pay an insurance renewal notice.

If you do it’s sheer madness.

And I’ll tell you why.

Last month a whopping big branch landed smack, bang in the middle of my car while it was parked in my driveway.

I was away for the weekend so my friendly neighbours decided to lend a helping hand and lifted the almighty branch off my car.

With all my evidence gone except for a massive dent in my bonnet, I got home, thanked my neighbours and quickly rang my insurer.

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Motorists are being urged to check their policies carefully before they make an auto renewal. Picture: Supplied

To cut a long story short, I took the car into the assessor and it was all smooth sailing, pay the $600 excess and bingo, a new bonnet and side panels for my car.

Very few questions asked.

It was very painless and I was left a happy little camper and now have a car that looks in mint condition again.

But all good things do come to an end.

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Just this month I received my annual premium renewal notice and as expected my premium would go up.

And the only way I could work this out was by digging out my old paperwork and tapping out some simple numbers — my annual premium had jumped from $707 to $797.

Never in a million years did I expect it to jump by a whopping 12 per cent.

What a rip off.

I jumped on the phone to my insurer and demanded an explanation as to why my premium had shot up by so much.

Make sure you do the maths and understand the costs of your insurance premium before signing up to a policy. Picture: Supplied

And the explanation was a whole lot of waffle, I’d made a claim recently and yes premiums often rise so there you go.

This wasn’t good enough, I asked what they could do for me or I was out of there.

If they didn’t drop my premium renewal I told them I’d be better off letting my renewal expire and then signing up again as a new customer and getting the discount for being a newbie through the front door.

The woman on the other end of the blower could tell I was getting a little hot under the collar and said she knew exactly how I felt as she’s a consumer too.

And within about 30 seconds she had some good news to tell me.

Asking an insurer for a discount can pay off. Picture: Supplied

She said she had to dig deep but she could give me a “discretionary discount” which she couldn’t explain how it was calculated but my premium would substantially drop.

It would fall to $704 — lower than last year’s premium — on the spot.

Just by asking, that’s all it took.

A little huffing and puffing and I got what I wanted.

She said she could see I’d been with the insurer a few years and she wanted to look after me.

Bless her.

Moral of the story — always keep your paperwork so you can compare your premium hikes year on year and don’t ever auto review.

Always demand a better deal because it often pays off.

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@sophieelsworth