Prius Gen 4 Insurance renewal.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Toyota Motor Insurance is a subsidiary of Aloi Nissay Dowa Insurance Europe, and have their own network of approved repairers. It will be the insurer who guarantees the quality of repairs undertaken by their approved repairers.

[Chris Dance]

Agree with Frosty.

Toyota car insurance is expensive but it is a 5 star insurance company and if you are unfortunate to have an accident and own a Toyota vehicle of reasonable value then I would want it repaired by a Toyota repair centre. Toyota dealers can tell you where their approved centre is. Another thing to consider is if a Toyota repair centre repairs a vehicle, that repair is guaranteed for thee years and if you P/X with Toyota it does not affect the resale value. One downside is that if there is an accident with your vehicle you will not get a courtesy car until the vehicle is being repaired. This is stated in the Toyota renewal documents.

[YarisHybrid2016]

On 8/25/2017 at 8:54 PM, DAN@ADRIAN FLUX said:

Hi.

Unfortunately due to a number of well documented reasons insurance has increased considerably over the last 12 months I'm afraid. If you did want to try an alternative then please feel free to give us a try if you wish.

Regards,

Dan.

In my experience they've used the same reasons twice!

Year 1 to year 2 saw an increase of 22%, then year 2 to year 3 saw another hike of 13%, but I negotiated it back down to the same as last year (otherwise, in 2 years, I would have seen my insurance cost rise 35%!!!). Outrageous! Neither the insurance tax nor anything else the insurance companies were, or are, screaming about, accounted for the rise!

I paid £350 fully comp. this year, and have 5 years NCB.

[MEP's Yaris GS]

On 8/26/2017 at 0:29 PM, Chris Dance said:

Just got on line quote from Aviva. Cover was the same as Toyota. Only one thing worried me and that was that Aviva would prefer to use only Aviva recommended repairers who can use non standard parts.

Can't say I have an issue with this. Toyota don't make the actual parts themselves anyway, so as long as its an OEM part, direct from a manufacture etc, then so be it.

At least they're not like Admiral group who specifically advise they reserve the right to use 2nd hand parts.

[Duffryn]

Just to resurrect an old thread - my insurance renewal 'offer' from Toyota (Aioi etc.) has just arrived, with another 11.5% hike to add to the 13.3% increase last year. Now it's gone over £400, but a bit of research via confused.com finds that I could easily save c£140 by switching, with a choice of several well-known companies quoting. 

But I'd still like my car have any repairs carried out by a recognised Toyota repair shop, so suppose I've little option other than to renew, although I'll make an attempt to get a reduction when I ring them.

[Heidfirst]

2 hours ago, Duffryn said:

But I'd still like my car have any repairs carried out by a recognised Toyota repair shop, so suppose I've little option other than to renew, although I'll make an attempt to get a reduction when I ring them.

you are entitled to use your own choice of repairer but it may vary the terms (e.g. excess, courtesy car, guarantee on repair) - you would need to check policy documents to see what was involved for each insurer quoting.

[Harters]

From my experience the repair shop is only as good as the person doing the job no matter what group they belong to.

When I had a small repair made to the rear bumper of my previous Q5 it was repaired by an official Audi bodyshop and it was a total botch up and needed several return visits to get it sorted.  Recently my partners MX5 got backed into and was sent to an approved Mazda bodyshop and that again was botched and needed an independent inspector involved to get it sorted.  In the end we ended up with compensation which was pretty close to the value of the car (04 reg).  The colour match still isn't quite right, but in the end we thought well its 14 years old and decided to accept it.

The inspector told us "that bodyshops repair to a standard that most people will accept". I could hardly believe my ears!

In the end its all down to luck!

[Chris Dance]

My Toyota Insurance is very high because of a a claim I had following a collision I had a long distance from where i live.. Following that collision I am glad I had insurance with Toyota. ( The police had the car recovered.) Toyota Ins.were great in every way except when I contacted them on the Sunday morning of the collision. That operator was unhelpful on that day. On the Monday I rang Toyota Insurance again and explained how unhappy I was with the decisions made by the Toyota  operator on the Sunday. Within the hour they arranged everything and within two days got my car brought to my local Toyota repair centre together with all my personal belongings which had to be left in the damaged car.   I am sure another company would have written the car off as it was badly damaged. Toyota repaired the car to as new with three year warranty on the repairs etc. After the repairs I was told that in no way would having the car repaired to Toyota standards affect the trade in value. This turned out to be true as I traded that Gen 3 Prius in for a new Gen 4 Prius a year or so later.  Toyota insurance is very high compared to other companies but I think it is worth it in the end if like me you have a major collision.  The only reason I traded in the Gen 3 was because of the road tax increases on April 1st 2017 NOT because of the repairs.

[Cyker]

It depends - The single reason I switched to Toyota Insurance is they were the cheapest at the time!!!! (Crazy, I know!)

The thing is I don't want to ever have a claim through them because I know they'll just write off the car - Using Toyota parts and workshops for anything but a minor repair will easily exceed the value of the car!

That said, I have no loyalty to any insurance company; They only put the prices up every year. The only way to get it down is to hunt around and switch! There are a few I automatically exclude like Direct Line and LV, who I've not heard good things about when it came to claims handling from friends, but I know a few people here have dealt with them on this forum who've had glowing praise so it's a bit tricky to know which insurers to avoid!!

I also try to avoid ones like Co-op who make you do everything on-line so you can't haggle, and don't even send out anything, so you have to print out your own documentation... annoyingly this seems to becoming increasingly common practice...

[Heidfirst]

33 minutes ago, Cyker said:

That said, I have no loyalty to any insurance company; They only put the prices up every year. The only way to get it down is to hunt around and switch!

I agree, in fact just did that this morning for my buildings & contents. Stayed with same company with exact same policy but it was 18% cheaper buying via comparethemarket than direct (I called up, explained & tried to haggle but they couldn't move on the phone). & they will have paid comparethemarket a commission .... crazy!

[Cyker]

Haaa that is so stupidly daft!

[Duffryn]

Thanks for the replies guys, I will ring Toyota next week to see if there's any sniff of a reduction (ho-hum!), I cover less than 5K miles per year nowadays, and also fitted a Dashcam a few months back, but I do not honestly expect to get anything back, other than perhaps a bit of sympathy!

After reading carefully (!) my renewal notice I see that they state that my car does not possess either a fitted alarm or immobiliser - I thought both were standard on the T Spirit. I will mention that to them too.

[Duffryn]

Well, it was worth a phone call as I managed to get a £57 reduction - this includes a 5% reduction due to my having Toyota Roadside Assistance. I wasn't aware that having TRA entitled me to any reduction, so was a pleasant surprise. Toyota Insurance duly renewed.

[Chris Dance]

Pleased to hear that David. As I have stated I was pleased I had Toyota Insurance following my collision incident. I hope my renewal will not be too high this year; like you I will have to "haggle".