UKH

Someone I work with – honestly its not me.

They have had the above insurance for the last 9 months – they want to scrap the car as its uneconomical to fix.

When they took the insurance they had to have a black box fitted, and the engineer who fitted it took photos of the car. The T+C’s of the insurance is to tell them of all dents and scratches. In the last few months, there has been several scratches and a noticeable dent in the car.

He is now concerned that as he wants to scrap the car the insurance provider will take the box out and compare the photos to the current state of the car. He had not told the insurance provider about the dents and scratches. He is worried that they will invalidate the insurance because of this. He is a young driver fairly recently passed his test and a provision of the insurance was the black box.

Does any one have any experience of this sort of situation? An option he has is to keep the car and insurance until it runs out – end of March and has heard that they do not collect the box at this point as the insurance has run out.

Any thought please.

Thank you.

I've just been looking at this sort of insurance for my son, who passed his test yesterday.  

Some of the reviews on TrustPilot make it seem like these black box insurers will try anything to squeeze more money out of you, and sell the insurance premium at a loss in the hope of catching you out later (driving too fast, accelerating too hard, driving too many miles at peak times etc.).  I'm almost certainly going to steer my son away from such policies, unless the provider scores some decent reviews, and their small print isn't full of gotchas. Maybe "More Than" are OK.

Your friend needs to check the T+Cs very carefully, as he will probably be liable for increased premiums due to the non-declared scratches etc. If it's clear that he'll be OK if he keeps the policy until the full 12 months, and no inspection will be required, then it might be best to do that.

Good luck to to him.

Edited: typos - I assume that the dislike is from a grammar nazi?

I wouldn't worry. If he craps it now, he'll get a small rebate on the unused insurance months. The people removing the box will be sub-contractors. Why would the insurance company care about the state of the car if he hasn't claimed on it and the policy is now defunct?

The insurance company will get the 3rd party to remove the black box and they may wish to pass the cost of this on as the cost of the box plus fitting is likely to be around £150-£250. I've not heard of charging for dents and scratches before but if it's in the Ts & Cs then it's likely to make sure they price the driver correctly in any future pricing.

If he doesn't want to continue with the insurance then they'll probably charge to retrieve the box and possibly a cancellation fee but I wouldn't expect the damage to the car to be an issue.

If he wants to carry on being insured with them then the damage *may* be taken into consideration for future pricing.

Hope that helps.

We sold a car in Sept that had a black box installed via Morethan. We'd had it about 8 months,  so cancelled the insurance. 

They told me they didn't want the black box back,  but if we wanted it removed it would cost us ~£150.

As such we sold the car with the black box left inside and have heard nothing since

I don't understand why a company would want to 'catch you out'. Insurance is priced based on risk which is calculated from statistics of people having or causing accidents. Black box and app based products are designed to help people pay lower premiums by self selecting out bad drivers (boy racer types) which helps insurers refine their risk based pricing algorithms. They gather data that would otherwise be unavailable. Having said that, the technology is not yet infallible and there are cases of people being penalised for doing 60 in a 30 zone where the GPS thought the car was on an A road but was on an adjacent motorway for example. Of course if you want cheaper premiums and you feel that you're a better driver than the average then these products may be for you, however I'd certainly want to be checking to make sure the tech hadn't got anything wrong and I'd want to make sure I had a good safety margin around their parameters (speed, cornering, braking, etc).

The dislike was directed to the naive comment on companies only being in business to catch people out and not the rest of the post.

Phil - I wasn't intentionally stating that all black box insurance companies are looking to catch you out. As you can see I said that "More Than" may not be such a company. I also said that I'd got my information from reviews of such companies. Even when taking these with a pinch of salt, there appear to be hundreds of examples of such companies providing terrible service and charging significant surplus premiums for minor infractions and also errors within their own black boxes. 

I think you may be naive yourself in thinking that these companies aren't creating these policies with a view to recouping additional premiums through the black boxes. I agree, however, that the technology can't be perfect - but some of the reviews I've read have reported issues trying to get refunds for cancelling their insurance due to dodgy black box readings.

I'd be interested to know if there have been any independent reviews of how driving behaviour in younger drivers is impacted by these devices. If the technology was near-perfect, and the insurance policies were purely based on risk (and not profit), then they would be a good thing.

To the OP - get your friend to ring More Than to get clarification. It looks from another post that there won't be any issue.

If you signed a contract that stated that you are to inform them of any and all damage to the car including minor door dings etc[1], and you don't do so, and seek to avoid them finding out by other means, surely it is the insured trying to catch the insurer out?

Heavy discounts are available for choosing restrictive T&Cs.  If you don't like them, pay more for a conventional policy.

[1] I expect most policies say you have to tell them about actual accident damage, partly because it will affect their assessment of risk, and partly because it will affect the value of the asset you're insuring.  However, most policies don't take photos of the car, and most insurers won't give a stuff about "de minimis" stuff like door dings and tree branch scratches, or even something like a keying unless you claim.

Three options:

Keep the policy and the dead car until the contract is up. Costs c3 months premium.

Report the scratches then cancel the policy and scrap the car. They won't bother recovering the box either way. Probably saves one month premium and some messing about storing and taxing a dead car until March.

Inform them of the plan to scrap and cancel so they can recover the box if that is required by the T&C of the policy, they won't send anyone out for the box but even if they do and the 'engineer' cares your mate no longer needs the policy, the car is off to the scrappy.

Don't overthink it, ask if they want the box back then get rid.

jk

With most insurers these days you wouldn't get anything back if you cancelled 3 months before the end due to cancellation fees anyway.  So simply allowing the policy to lapse might do, provided you either do SORN or have it scrapped on the end date.

 The way my views are going I must be the next level down from naive...

No point canceling with 3 months to go unless your friend needs to get another car on the road. It they can do without until March I would keep it and let the insurance run out and gain the years no claims. 

I’ve been with coverbox for coming up to two years now and although they are black box I’ve never had an issue with them at all, massively reduced my excess and premium for the second year and give plenty of leeway regarding speed in my experience...