I paid bemoto £140 last year to insure my bike. This year they want £156. So I used a comparison site to get some new quotes. Swinton will insure me for £111 for exactly the same cover. Bennett’s, Bikesure, Devitt, carol Nash, Hastings, MCN, etc are all more expensive. So normally I’d be going with Swinton. But it’s the compulsory excess which is bothering me - all the insurance companies want a £500+ compulsory excess - I can get the voluntary excess down to £100. Is this amount of excess ‘normal’ - I can’t seem to find a company which allows any negotiation on compulsory excess. The bike is a 2004 1000rr, garaged, 5,000 miles pa, social and domestic use, suburban post code. I’m 65, retired been riding for 40+ years, 9+ no claims bonus, no recent claims or offences. The highest quote was MCE - they wanted £380 with a £1000 compulsory excess. I guess that they really didn’t want my business.
It’s maybe a coincidence that your new quote is exactly 10.7% increase over last year which is the current “official” inflation rate…
It's all a balance of risk and probability and how you want to juggle them. I pay a higher premium. £300 but have zero excess and zero vol excess. I had my last bike pushed over when parked on the side stand by some idiot who walked into it and had a fight not to get it written off as insurers repairers said it needed a new swing arm , tank and bars. (they were scratched. Think it was a con to pay me a low figure then keep the bike and sell it on for a profit) Eventually got it back but had to jump hoops and pay £500 excess. That was on a £150 premium. At renewal I just thought it was worth the risk of a higher premium than chance a load of xs. - with a different company of course. YMMV.
I wrote off my previous blade in an accident that wasn't actually my fault, I came round a bend and went to overtake a car only for him to decide he was going to overtake the car in front of him without indicating I had to jump on the brakes and lost the front end. The car never stopped and I never had a witness so I ended up having to claim on my own insurance and stupidly hadn't checked if my no claims discount was protected and ended up loosing 3 years and having to pay £700 for my next year. The only saving grace was I got £750 for my helmet and leathers add on so after everything I got the full value of my bike after they took off the excess. My new renewal is down to £290 2 years later so I'm a wee bit more cautious with checking my policy, also don't anyone ever go with MCE a couple of years ago they went into administration and I was one of the many who had to take out a new policy with no compensation (there's plenty of us out there and a big thread on here about it) !!!!
