CUTTING COSTS
I brought my teenage son’s car insurance down by £25k using easy Martin Lewis tricks – premiums are ‘ridiculous’
Including the best time to apply for a policy
A MUM has revealed how a set of easy Martin Lewis tips helped her slash her son's car insurance cost by £25,000.
Young Dylan Allman was quoted a mind-boggling £28,000 a year when trying to buy his first motor.
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The 17-year-old, from South Wales, was overjoyed when he passed his test, but the search for an insurance policy quickly left him despondent.
One provider, which marketed itself as "perfect for young drivers" offered a price of £10,000 and even the cheapest third party cover was hoping £4,000.
Mum Lorraine was baffled by the high premiums and looked into how to cut them down to size.
She told : "He passed his test in February, and we were elated.
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"Living in a rural area, where there is very limited access to public transport, without a car or someone to pick him up, he would often struggle to get home from school.
"He needed this.
"We started shopping around for deals at the start of the year using the main insurance comparison sites when he was preparing for his test, just to get an idea of how much it was likely to cost.
"They varied hugely but were all staggeringly high."
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In "complete disbelief" at the quotes, Lorraine set about making some subtle changes to the application to see if she could make a difference.
First of all, she added herself to the policy as secondary driver in a trick she picked up from Martin Lewis, which estimates could save up to £281.
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The more experienced driver is not allowed to add themselves as the main applicant (this is known as "fronting" and is illegal) but as long as you both use the car you can both be named drivers on the policy.
She also made sure to apply around three weeks in advance, as Martin recommends, and to pay the annual cost upfront rather than monthly.
Eventually, she managed to secure Dylan a comprehensive policy with 12 months of breakdown cover for just £1,312, around £25,000 less than the highest quote.
Greg Wilson, CEO of Quotezone which was one of the providers Lorraine tried, said: "Without seeing the detail of this particular individual, it is difficult to tell why the premium returned was so much higher than average.
"Insurers review each driver individually looking at a number of variations such as the cost of the vehicle in question, whether or not they park on the street overnight, crime rate where the driver lives and any claims or penalty points on their driving history – it’s possible that this individual may fall into a high-risk category.
"It’s very important that customers double check the details on the form are accurate, even a small mistake in a key field, such as postcode or occupation could incorrectly place someone in a high-risk category and therefore return a higher premium."
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