Do you recommend your car insurance?

Foxhound5366

Foxhound5366

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Ok, so some people might have seen that I've been a fan of Outsurance on here, but I think we may have to part after the latest annual re-rate I received.

They informed me that my premiums were going up from R874 to R1261/month ... a cool bump of 44% 0.o

When I phoned them they confirmed the reason was that in the last year I've been involved in two car accidents, and no, it doesn't matter that I wasn't at fault, or that both of those drivers were insured and Outsurance would have received their money back.

After I objected strenuously to this, they DID adjust the increase down a bit to R1 164 (just less than a R100 'saved'), but I think I could probably do better elsewhere.

I drive a 2012 Citroen C3 in Cape Town, for goodness sake, and apart from these two incidents have had about five accident-free years with Outsurance beforehand. I'm not a 22-year old kid in a Subaru living in Alexandria. Too bad they're willing to throw that all under the bus, but it's their call.

Soooooo ...

1: Do you have a car insurer you recommend? I was thinking about Discovery, because A: I trust Discovery; and B: I'm already on their medical insurance so was hoping that might result in a lower premium (albeit I'll still disclose those two incidents).

2: In your experience, do insurance companies always increase premiums after an accident even if it wasn't your fault, or are there some that don't? Related note, do the premiums ever come down at the next annual re-rate, or is the baseline set and it just keeps increasing?

Thanks for any advice :)
 
Santam and Mutual & Federal always seem popular I havent heard any bad stories about them but the ones that do daytime advertising I have.


If you have accidents your risk profile goes up and you pay more and 2 so close together will make a difference.
 
Beachless said:
If you have accidents your risk profile goes up and you pay more and 2 so close together will make a difference.
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Look, insurance companies have expert assessors available to them, and the whole point of those guys is to actually determine who was at fault.

I dare Outsurance or anybody else to tell me a single thing I could have done differently to have avoided either of the accidents where the other parties drove into me because they weren't looking ... I've thought about it a million times, and in both instances it wasn't something from the front that I could have seen and avoided. One accident was from the side and the other was from the rear, and they had NOTHING to do with me or my risk profile.

If this is Outsurance's punitive way of punishing me as a loyal customer for being driven into by idiots, then they need to rethink that as a strategy.

Thanks for those two suggestions, I'll check them out :)
 
I'm with Mutual & Federal, and I'm happy with them. I do work through a broker though. Never had issues with claims so far, and didn't get increased premiums when someone scratched my car in a parking lot...
 
The system is not fair and you are being punished for others carelessness unfortunately depending on the way they calculate the risk thats the end result.
Phoning around for quotes is your best bet until you find someone who rates those incidents as low risk.
 
I'm quite happy with MiWay, and they're one of the cheapest ones. One of the things I really like about them is that you can do most of the admin online.

Keep in mind that if you do change insurance, you will have to notify the new company about those two accidents (otherwise they can refuse to pay out if you are in an accident again).

If you do get a cheaper quote somewhere else, call OutSurance again with that quote - they may try to match it.
 
falcrum said:
If you do get a cheaper quote somewhere else, call OutSurance again with that quote - they may try to match it.
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Yeah, that would make me feel super crummy ... it's like approaching your wife with a new woman at your side, and telling your wife that you're prepared to divorce her unless she does everything the new woman will.

Ok ok, I know it's only business and not personal, but honestly if the company doesn't value me enough to want to retain my business the first time around, then I don't feel they deserve a second shot at it.

My only concern is about cutting off my nose to spite my face - Outsurance has at least paid for both my recent claims without quibbling, and ultimately that's all I want from my insurance. The last thing I want is ending up with some company that rejects a claim, which would cost me a lot more than an increase with Outsurance.
 
Sinbad said:
outsurance are a bad joke.
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Ok, care to elaborate on why?

I haven't really had any reason to enjoy their service - customer care has been average, client documentation has been sub-optimal - but the main thing is that they've paid out about as much as I've paid in, which is all I could really ask for. However, if you have awesome war stories, please share!
 
Foxhound5366 said:
Ok, care to elaborate on why?

I haven't really had any reason to enjoy their service - customer care has been average, client documentation has been sub-optimal - but the main thing is that they've paid out about as much as I've paid in, which is all I could really ask for. However, if you have awesome war stories, please share!
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Quoted me for one car the same as I am paying for 3 cars and half a million household contents.
Lots of anecdotes about claims being denied for silly reasons.
Most insurers pay out.
Mine even refunded my excess after someone drove into me.
 
Try king price,

Just joined them, so I can't tell you what they like, but so far they cheaper than outsurance,

And seemed good enough, lots of extras included that my previous insurer virgin money charge extra for......

Shop around, and as many people on mybb say get a broker.
 
That's cool eg2505, but I'm sceptical about King Price. Their advertising is waaaaay too cheesy to give me a good 'Yeah, I can trust these guys' sort of feeling.

I'm not in this primarily to save money because I understand the risks of car insurance, but rather just to avoid being ripped off my Outsurance and having insult added to injury.
 
Foxhound5366 said:
That's cool eg2505, but I'm sceptical about King Price. Their advertising is waaaaay too cheesy to give me a good 'Yeah, I can trust these guys' sort of feeling.

I'm not in this primarily to save money because I understand the risks of car insurance, but rather just to avoid being ripped off my Outsurance and having insult added to injury.
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Yeah, I thought the same as you, their admin is also a bit cheesy as well,

I asked the same a while back,
Seems one is the same as any other,
Shopping around is the way to go,
 
Speaking of one is the same as any other, I've been pretty impressed while reading up on Discovery Insure's services, particularly this page: https://www.discovery.co.za/portal/individual/insure-keeping-you-safe

Sounds super useful to me ... they'll monitor if your vehicle is in an accident and send medical services if they don't get a response to their phonecall (I wonder how well that works in practice?), and you also get geographically-accurate weather warnings (e.g. warning you of an impending hailstorm).

That, coupled with their policy of 'no excess payment if the third party who crashes into you is insured' (which is one of my quibbles with Outsurance), is reason enough to switch. I'm guessing it won't all come cheap though, but I've submitted a request for a quote and we'll see how that turns out.

If you have experience with Discovery Insure, please share!
 
Foxhound5366 said:
They informed me that my premiums were going up from R874 to R1261/month ... a cool bump of 44% 0.o

I drive a 2012 Citroen C3 in Cape Town, for goodness sake
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You were paying R874 for a 2012 Citroen? I pay less than R800 for a 2014 M235i. Granted, I have taken a much higher excess; but this still seems ridiculous - even before the hike.
 
Foxhound5366 said:
Speaking of one is the same as any other, I've been pretty impressed while reading up on Discovery Insure's services, particularly this page: https://www.discovery.co.za/portal/individual/insure-keeping-you-safe

Sounds super useful to me ... they'll monitor if your vehicle is in an accident and send medical services if they don't get a response to their phonecall (I wonder how well that works in practice?), and you also get geographically-accurate weather warnings (e.g. warning you of an impending hailstorm).

That, coupled with their policy of 'no excess payment if the third party who crashes into you is insured' (which is one of my quibbles with Outsurance), is reason enough to switch. I'm guessing it won't all come cheap though, but I've submitted a request for a quote and we'll see how that turns out.

If you have experience with Discovery Insure, please share!
Click to expand...

Discovery has many, many terms and conditions. Read up properly.
 
Splinter said:
You were paying R874 for a 2012 Citroen? I pay less than R800 for a 2014 M235i. Granted, I have taken a much higher excess; but this still seems ridiculous - even before the hike.
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Yeah well, I do also have the car rental option added on (which is cheap - I think R70/month), short-fall cover and home contents insurance of R110. My excess is also only R1 000 (and thank goodness for that after these two accidents). My base car premium is around R700 in CPT (was more like R900 in Johannesburg lol).
 
OP,

I move to Santam 2 years ago, after a similar story.
2 vehicles(1 new, 1 older run around) and hoisehold was/is less than just the new vehicle would have been at outsurance.
 
Thanks Venomous! I actually had a long chat with a consultant at Discovery Insure today - 45 minutes, their phonecall - to be precise, and I've decided to stick with the (other) devil I know rather than the devil I don't.

I'll be switching to Discovery, and the reasons might be interesting to others here. Firstly, even WITH my two previous incidents in this year disclosed, I'm still going to get a cheaper and better deal from Discovery than Outsurance.

It helped that I've got Discovery medical insurance, because (if you believe it) Discovery is running a promotion to encourage their medical members to take up car insurance with them too.

It might also have helped that I'd taken home insurance with Discovery, because through some interesting mix of calculations ... the more cover you take, the cheaper it all gets.

The net outcome was: the entry-level Discovery quote (Discovery Essential) was cheaper than even the Outsurance revised quotation, AND the mid-level Discovery quote (Discovery classic) was the same price.

Now this is where it starts getting interesting, because Discovery Insure's tracking unit has no subscription costs, and will offer me all the same benefits that my Tracker Skytrax unit does (which costs me R250/month). So right off the bat, I'll be saving R250/month, right?

I'd tried to keep everything else standard between my Outsurance and Discovery packages, but whereas Outsurance's minimum home insurance is R50 000, Discovery's minimum is R150 000. Also, there's some other special combination that the salesperson explained to me, but basically if I get covered for R250 000, it ends up getting cheaper. Soooo ... anyway, my home insurance cover is now 5x that of what Outsurance had me covered for.

Another nice difference is I requested an upgrade from the entry-level car rental inclusion (which is the same Class A hatchback like a Hyundai i10 like it is with Outsurance), for only R45/month, to a VW Polo instead (this isn't a benefit for Discovery because Outsurance could have offered this to me too, but the point is that I'm getting more value for less money when it's all combined).

There is ONE concern though: Discovery's flat (non-negotiable) excess is R3 000/month, while I had R1 000/month through Outsurance. However, there *is* something that balances this out too: on Discovery Classic you don't pay any excess if your car is stolen, hijacked, damaged by hail or non-motor related incidents (the salesperson used an example of a brick falling off a truck and hitting my car), AND you don't pay any excess if the other driver in a car accident is at fault *and* is insured (this is a bit of pot luck in South Africa but it's still nice to have). In fact, I went for the more expensive Classic package (around R200/month more expensive than Essential) to benefit from the zero excess, which doesn't apply to Essential ... I figure it could pay for itself quite quickly with a streak of bad luck.

Something interesting is that based on your driving style - as reported by the tracking unit - you can rack up driving skill points, which you will get as cash back that further reduces your premium (I've got no doubt it won't be a lot upfront, but the idea of proactively saving money and reducing risk simply through driving better is great).

Ok, and here's where we get to the final swing factor: according to Discovery's salesperson, they're the only insurance company that will phone you proactively if their tracking system detects that you've been in a collision, and they'll try and phone you immediately. If you don't answer and the tracking system reports remotely that the g-level of the impact wasn't serious, they'll automatically despatch a towtruck to your location. If you don't answer and the system reports a serious collision, they'll despatch a towtruck AND an ambulance. And cherry on top? Because I'm with Discovery medical, they'll remotely transfer my medical profile and medical plan details to the paramedics attending to the accident scene. I value that a lot.

Oh, as a final touch, immediately after signing up, I got a number of professional detailed PDF documents in an e-mail, and an attractive e-mail, confirming my cover and explaining how everything works. Decent marketing material is vital ... Outsurance's policy documents and e-mails are extremely plain by comparison.

Long story, but I'm sharing it because I hope it adds some value for people in the same situation as I've been here. I am NOT claiming already that Discovery Insure is the best insurance - I have no doubt I'll discover niggles as I go along - but I can conclusively state that contrary to what I'd originally expected, Discovery *could* match and improve on Outsurance's quotation, while simultaneously offering a lot more value and more neatly-integrated services that I find attractive (Outsurance just dangles that 'no-claim bonus' carrot which they quickly yank away everytime somebody else damages your car).

Well done Discovery for an attractive and competitive package, and so sorry Outsurance ... I'd seriously tried to get your consultant to reduce the premium increase further, but now I'm happy they didn't budge a lot. Here's to seeing how it all plays out :)
 
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