Caravan Insurance Excitement
Mar 9th
You would be forgiven for thinking that the world of caravan insurance was not an exciting place. Most of us have a stereotype of the average caravan owner lodged in our subconscious, and the insurance industry does not fare much better. So the intersection of the two becomes some sort of boredom nexus – a black hole sucking the interestingness froom the rest of the universe.
But the announcement today of the arrest of a gang of caravan thieves, who were responsible for nearly half of the caravan robberies perpetrated in the UK. The members of the gang also stole cars and motorhomes, and were caught in possession of £700,000 worth of caravans.
Leaving aside the question of what kind of people could possibly want £700,000 worth of caravans (they were a family of travellers) and how they managed to hide all those caravans from the Top Gear production staff for so long, the case does present many interesting aspects (bearing in mind we are still talking about caravans).
The thefts took place between 2004 and 2007, giving police the chance to measure the effect of the arrests on the rate of caravan thefts, and after they were detained, thefts of caravans fell from 848 to 454 in a year.
No less than 19 police forces were involved in the operation to catch the villains but the bad news is that with sentences of four to five years, and given that the perpetrators seem to have spent a large part of the intervening time on remand, they could well be back on the streets before too long. So with that in mind here are some caravan security tips.
1.) Several of the caravans stolen were taken from driveways. For this kind of theft, physical security products are ideal. Hitch locks, wheel clamps, corner locks, ground anchors and security posts all operate in different ways, but the aim is the same – preventing opportunist thieves from making an easy getaway. Any of these products on their own will be an improvement on no security, but using multiple devices in combination makes things that much harder for a thief. You’ll want to look for the Sold Secure marker.
2.) Tags and Trackers – Security markers, electronic tags (fitted as standard to many caravans) and tracking devices, and although they may not stop a theft from happening, they significantly increase the chances of your caravan being returned to you in the event that it is stolen. Note that caravan trackers are different to the car variety, designed to run from the leisure battery.
3.) Caravan alarms – as well as protecting your contents, these are designed to go off when someone hooks up the road lights.
Any of these can help you secure a reduction in your caravan insurance premium, but there are other precautions you can consider too. Several of the thefts were from motorway service areas, so when you stop for a rest break, consider whether someone should remain with the caravan. If this is not possible think about where you park and consider applying security devices if your stop is going to be a long one. You can also consider how you park, and park in a way that makes theft harder.
I promised you excitement, but for caravan owners, excitement is not necessarily a great thing…
A Fresh Lick of Paint
Mar 8th
Long time readers will notice that something looks very different. It goes beyond having a new theme – we’ve migrated from Google’s Blogger service, which we’ve been using since we started the blog in 2006. We had to do this, as Google are discontinuing FTP publishing, We’ve switched to Wordpress, which also powers influx, everybodys favourite online car magazine, which gives us the benefit of all the plugins and tweaks available for the platform.
We’re hoping there aren’t too many issues caused by the migration, but the blog has too many pages to check individually these days, so if you do find any broken links or iffy formatting, please drop me a line via the comments, and bear in mind that we still have a few things to fix.
In other news, we’re really pleased to have been named as one of the top 10 UK insurance blogs by our friends at Insiders View. It’s a great honour to be mentioned in the same breath as full time pros like the Times and Guardian money blogs, as well as Jasmine Birtle’s Money Magpie, and other top reads.
Like I say, we hope everything works out, but as with all paint jobs, disaster is only a slight error away and one false move can lead to a hefty claim on your car or home insurance…
Golf’s Driving Range!
Feb 26th
Volkswagen have just released details of the new CrossGolf, making its début at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show. Now VW say that it “blurs the line between a multipurpose vehicle and an SUV”, although isn’t that meant to be the Tiguan? The CrossGolf doesn’t even have all-wheel drive, but just a higher ride height and off-road looks… so essentially a GolfPlus in a flat cap, wax jacket and wellies!
The Mk5 Polo is only 10″ shorter and 4″ narrower than the Mk6 Golf, and yet VW are also releasing the CrossPolo. I think VW are just getting a bit silly now!
The range is shown here…
If you want to be critical of the VW(Golf) range, you have the Golf, Golf Estate, Golf Plus (slightly bigger Golf), Jetta (Golf saloon), Tiguan (Golf 4×4), Eos (Golf Convertible), Scirocco (Golf coupé) and Touran (slightly bigger than the Golf Plus, Golf MPV). All of these cars are based on the same platform! Now with the CrossGolf and the very similar sized Polo editions, VW are really trying to appeal to EVERYONE!
On the plus side the Polo GTI is also set to premier at Geneva, and this looks amazing…
… although if you want to be critical, now there’e not much difference between that and the Golf GTI, it’s not even that much slower.
Magic Quote – Insurance with a clean slate
Feb 23rd
Imagine a world without no claims bonus. If you have built up a good history of claim free driving, there is probably nothing that fills you with more dread than the prospect of losing your hard earned No Claims Discount. And, of course, these days, once you have it, you can protect it – at least for the first claim or two.
The americans call this accident forgiveness:
But for many drivers who haven’t been able to build up NCB entitlement, the price of insurance can be a massive problem. Young drivers and drivers of performance cars (often second cars) in particular have a big problem with lack of no claims.
In truth, having managed to avoid accidents is often, in practice down to luck as well as judgement and safe driving.
And there are other ways that you can lose your valuable NCD too, such as coming back from a period abroad or leaving company car schemes.
One fresh way of catering to this market is that available from Magic Quote, where the no claims bonus is abandoned in favour of a higher excess than usual. It’s certainly not a method that is suitable for everybody, but for the target market, who have been let down by the no claims system, it offers a route to affordable car insurance.
Mind where you Tweet…
Feb 22nd
Everyone loves social networking, and whether it’s twitter (we’re @adrianflux), facebook, or one of the other myriad social sites out there we are becoming a nation obsessed with the connectivity that the web 2.0 era has brought us.
But there are hidden dangers, and a Dutch student, called Barry Borsbroom, has recently highlighted the dangers of Geotagging your social posts.
Geotagging is where you allow your phone, computer or other device to share your current location with the web service using GPS, allowing your friends, and others to pinpoint where you are at any moment in time. While many applications are relatively benign, and companies as big as Google have jumped on the bandwagon with Latitude, there are circumstances in which this information can be used for less than savoury purposes.
Barry’s site is called PleaseRobMe, and he has created it using feeds from the popular third party Twitter ‘game’ FourSquare, where players accumulate points by tweeting locations that they are visiting and finding locations tagged by other players. No, I don’t get what the point of that is either, but grown men and women are doing this.
What Barry realised is that players, having set a ‘home’ location have given you all the information you need in order to rob them, including the data on where they are now, and how far from home they are. Some are clearly on extended vacations, based on their location updates. Not only that, but a browse through past Tweets will invariably yield useful info about their domestic situation, and lifestyle – all helpful to career burglars.
And with tools like Google Streetview available too, the crims could even ‘case the joint’ virtually.
So always think twice before sharing information online, otherwise you could get a nasty surprise when you get back home to find your home ransacked. Not only that, but, assuming you have home contents insurance (and you really, really should) you’ll be paying increased premiums for years to come.
There’s no need to be unduly worried, but you should always consider who gets access to the data you are sharing. Google isn’t going to rob you, your friends probably aren’t either. But making personal data public could well be a game of Russian Roulette.
Burnout Fail!
Feb 19th
Something for the weekend…
This guy in a 3rd Gen Camaro definitely chooses the wrong tires to do a burnout in, oh dear!
Give your Seatbelt a Hug
Feb 17th
I’ve seen this ad, produced by Sussex Safer Roads partnerships, three times in the last few days, so the chances are, you may have already seen it too. But the message it shares is so important, and the method of delivery so subtle, mouldbreaking and inspired, that if even one more person sees it and passes it on, it is worthwhile to share again.
It is called ‘Embrace Life’ and its sole purpose is to persuade you to always wear a seatbelt. You’d think that would be easy, given the proportion of car occupant fatalities who didn’t belt up, but the problem, which I’ve just illustrated is that to get the message across you have to talk about death, injury and crashes. And when you do that, people switch off. No-one thinks it will happen to them. And even having seen a graphic portrayal of the gruesome results of failing to clunk-click, the intended recipient of the message has dissociated the ad from their own life.
What this film does, is to come at the problem from a different angle, and with an impact that is emotional without being scary or sensational. I think the experience may vary from person to person, some may cry, others may feel uplifted, but I defy anyone not to be moved in some way.
Daniel Cox, the writer-director has this to say:
“It was central to the development of the project that we root the concept of wearing a seat belt firmly in the family domain, and create the advert so that it could be viewed by anyone of any age. Children are so important as opinion formers within their family that we felt it imperative to have a child take a pivotal role in relaying our message. One key aspect to the storytelling is that we developed Embrace Life to be non-language specific, so that the message wouldn’t become lost when viewed by visitors to, or residents of, the UK where English might not be their first language.”
I’ve waffled enough. Watch the ad.
A New Era in F1
Feb 15th
The 2010 Formula 1 season will be very different to the last, there are a few new teams, a few new faces but there is also a new set of rules to consider.
I might be getting ahead of myself as the new season doesn’t start for another month but the Formula 1 buzz has already begun with the release of all the 2010 car specs, liveries, teams etc.
There are 4 new teams joining F1, here’s the lowdown on my favourite two:
Virgin Racing
Virgin Racing’s car for 2010, the VR01, is said to be a new breed of racecar as it’s the first F1 car to be exclusively designed by CFD (computational fluid dynamics) computer technology. Virgin have got two very promising young drivers, and old rivals in GP2, Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi. If you want a chance to name Timo or Lucas’ cars, go the website by clicking here.
Lotus F1 Racing
There has been a lot of hype about the return of Lotus to F1, well there’s one main difference… they’re run by a partnership of the Malaysian Government and a consortium of Malaysian Entrepreneurs called 1Malaysia F1 Team. Other than that great racing pedigree, Lotus have another thing going for them and that’s their drivers. They’ve got the great experience of Italian Juano Trulli and the very talented ex-McLaren man Heikki Kovalainen.
Mercedes GP Petronas
Now technically this isn’t a new F1 team, Mercedes took over Brawn GP and this is the result. Although this is obviously a very exciting prospect for 2010, what with Brawn GP winning last years drivers and constructors championships and of course the fact that one of the best Formula 1 drivers of all time has come out of retirement to race. With Schumy being backed up by Nico Rosberg and should still have a great car, they could be realistic title contenders.
Rules
There are going to be quite a few rule changes for 2010, all found here.
The main one I’m going to focus on is the new points system. Now that there will be 26 cars instead of 24, 25 points will be awarded for 1st place, 18 for 2nd, 15 for 3rd and then 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and then 1 for 10th place.
I’m excited already!
Insurance for Older Women
Feb 11th
There have been a spate of articles recently about insurance for older people, and especially older women. This is an area that is a minefield of prejudice and conflicting opinion.
And whilst there is no doubt that the riskiest group of drivers on the road are the young, it is also true to say that elderly people pose a statistically higher risk to insurance companies than those in their middle age. They are, though, categorically much less dangerous than young drivers, and given this, it is surprising how hard it can be for older drivers to arrange insurance.
Many companies appear to be fearful of health-related issues causing accidents, and there are a number of other factors that appear to be at work. Premiums can be pushed up for all older drivers as slowly worsening reactions and the onset of old age result in, usually minor, bumps and knocks. But premiums shoot up faster for women.
Why is this? In many cases women suddenly take up the majority of driving after years of occasional use, when they lose their partner, or if he suffers health issues. Ladies also have longer lifespan and better health on average are also more likely to have a part time job, volunteer and socialise, which puts them on the road more.
All of this, though, should not stop an older driver from obtaining a competitive insurance quote, and although reports suggest that many mainstream companies are not offering insurance to over 80s, or even over-65 year-olds, there are competitive quotes available and we are able to offer and older drivers insurance quote for as long as you are able to safely drive.
And though younger drivers are much riskier, the unfair stereotypes of older drivers and women drivers being dangerous persist. Don’t look now, but, I think I’ve found the culprit:
Audi’s Green Police are on the Case
Feb 8th
Although everyone seems to be talking about Google’s superbowl advert, another ad that received its premiere outing last night was the latest from Audi. Now, in Europe, Audi aren’t really perceived as a ‘fun’ brand, and their ads tend to be somewhat portentous, with a focus on patents, technology and innovation – Vorsprung Durch Technik and all that.
But American audiences knew they were in for a treat when this teaser spot appeared (And yes, that does mean that superbowl ads are big enough to have their own ads!)
Yes, the Green Police are here, and, with tongue seemingly planted in cheek, they are going to stop you from breaking the planet. Unless you own an Audi A3 turbodiesel.
I love all the attention to detail in this ad, as it simultaneously pokes fun at the green movement, the law enforcement community and US reality TV all married to a Gillette-esque Power Jingle. Despite this it manages not to undermine the environmental messages. And compared to the petrol-engined gas-guzzlers favoured by the American people, a TDi is ultra-green. So much so the the A3 TDi is the current Green Car of the Year (beating the Prius and Insight, presumably on the grounds that normal folk might buy it).
And, of course, if you should need insurance for an Audi, or electric car insurance, you know exactly where to come.