I am 34, I have 5 years’ no-claims-bonus, have no driving convictions, and I have held my clean license for seventeen years. So why the FUCK is my insurance premium €1,000 for the year for a poxy Ford Focus???
To further rub my nose into it, I just came back from a weekend in the UK. A friend of mine has bought a beautiful old Alfa Romeo. His car insurance is STG£300 (~€500), fully comp, for the year. His brother has a Carmen Ghia, and his insurance is STG£125 (~€200), fully comp, for the year. They both live in London. Both are under 30.
Furthermore, I started up a new fucking insurance policy by phone last week, and called to make sure they had started the fucker, and the fucking braindead, slackjawed piece of cowshit I spoke to just now told me that my fucking insurance policy hadn’t started until this morning, which means my fucking car has been uninsured for the entire fucking weekend, as well as my always-precarious-due-to-incompetent-Dublin-drivers journey to work this fucking morning.
Yet the company’s appalling unnavigable shithole of a website boasts “instant cover by phone”. The hollow-headed twat I spoke to on the phone just now told me “oh that only applies if you pay for the entire year’s policy by credit card”. Fucking arseholic COCKSMOKERS. Note - these aren’t necessarily Irish insurance companies - many of these bastards are UK companies, and one is French.
There are no words for how much I loathe these smug, fucking, worthless, cartel-ridden, non-customer-service-oriented pile of hand-up-your-arse-right-up-to-the-elbow granny-fuckers.
But… that Alfa and that Karmann Ghia are probably so cheap to insure because they’re “oldtimers”, which in some cases can mean “a car that’s at least 20 years old”. I betcha normal insurance premiums (premia ;)) in London would be substantially higher.
I pay about EUR 435 per year, for half coverage (i.e. I still pay my own damage if I cause an accident) on a 5 year old Peugeot 306. 29, clean license for ten years, [sub]minor traffic accident three years ago[/sub], [sub]almost[/sub] never speeds, keeps distance…
One of the main reasons I don’t have a car is because of the price of Insurance.
The excuse the bastards always gave for such high quotes was the expensive legal costs in Ireland and the high payouts awarded to people.
These points are true but in a report last week it was found that
Irish insurance companies were making up to 10 times more profit than their UK counterparts.
So we’re getting up the ass from both sides so to speak. A highly litigious society and fuckers who’ll screw you to the wall for money.
As for the fuckwits working in these places i blame it on the Celtic Tiger. Pricks who would be flipping burgers 6 years ago are now controlling peoples lives.
I can’t learn to drive because I dont have a car.
I dont have a car because I can’t afford insurance.
I cant afford the insurance because I can’t drive.
Thats providing I can find an insurance company that will insure me in the first place.
But, of course, they’ll claim that they are losing money.
I am a US insurance actuary, without first-hand knowledge of Ireland. I have heard from others that Ireland’s courts are very generous in their awards – much more generous than UK courts. Those court awards are paid for by the premiums…
You are correct december this is adding to the costs but as I said my last post the insurance companies are making huge profits on top of the legal costs. 10 times more on average than UK companies.
High Legal Costs + High Settlements + Companies taking the piss with the level of profit = Poor motorists.
So now all we need is to stop the Legal profession, Insurance profession and the general public to show so sense and stop trying to milk this situation for all it’s worth.
However, this statistic is spin. I was invoved in UK motor insurance during part of the period 1983 - 1999. My reinsurance company shared the risk with 4 or 5 motor companies at Lloyd’s. That period was terrible for UK motor insurance profits. They took large losses in several of those years. I’m surprised that they had any profit at all over the period. So, the Irish companies made 11 times some tiny number.
A more meaningful statistic would be the average profit as a per cent of premium. I’d guess that this figure might be around 5%. There’s enough competition that profit can never be high for too long in this line of business.
Well, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know squat about car insurance in Ireland, but this is only true if there’s “free entry and exit” into the market. If there truly is a cartel, as jjimm says, and for some reason new companies can’t enter into the car insurance market, then profits could potentionally remain high. Out of curiosity, are there bars to new companies entering and undercutting the price of the current companies, jjimm?
To be honest, I don’t know about entry regulations, and I do know that Axa (French company) entered the market in the last five years. Axa immediately absorbed two of the major insurance companies, and I think it has now swallowed a third. The real problem seems to be with mergers and acquisitions.
[quote]
According to the figures contained in the Irish Insurance Federation fact files, the number of motor insurers through mergers and acquisitions has reduced from:[ul][li]25 in 1994[]20 in 1997[]14 in 1999[/ul][/li][/quote]
In two separate 1997 studies
[quoted]
(http://www.youth.ie/download/plunder_years.rtf) by the Youth Council of Ireland, Ireland had the highest insurance premiums in a survey of 11 EU countries, and the premiums were 66% higher than the second highest. Furthermore it is nearly impossible to get legally insured by an insurance company from another EU country.
The situation is even worse for younger drivers, many of whom are simply refused insurance by the companies.
For fuck’s sake, now I’m looking for cites, I’m getting even more pissed off with the cuntchops. Bunch of fucking fucknut greedy goatfucking bastards.
While Axa eat one half of the Irish insurance market, the other is being swallowed by Hibernian.
Hibernian. If I have to watch that stupid fucking ad with Jack and Jill and their cute Cork Hoor accents, I fucking swear that I’ll show them just how far their no claims bonus will strech. Jack, who I suspect to be a tax dodging bigamist and his “Sure, what harm? We’re covered Comprehensive!”. Get the fuck back down to Cork. Jill, the Sue Pollard lookalike that I suspect to be a member of the Masons, that stupid sounding voice, that moaning voice that I am sure Satan herself will sound like, is in more acciudents and car crashes than anyone in Ireland, and they are still bragging about their no claims bonus?
C’mon, a dog jumps onto the bonnet of the car, Jill crashes the car, and Hibernian are just going to believe her with no witnesses around?
You’ve pushed me too far this time Hibernian. toooo far.
