Quote Me Unhappy - 30% increase by Norwich Union

Today all over the news is Norwich Union saying that they will be increasing Car insurance Premiums by 16% on average. Whilst we at Adrian Flux have spent the last two weeks amending our schemes and rates to bring rates down even further. The Biggest decrease's has been for Jap imports up to 40% off current deals.


My 6 Top Tips for saving money on car insurance:

• If your insurance is due for renewal on the 1st of the month, if yes see if you can move back one day as most insurers increase rates from the 1st of the month.
  
  
• Shop around. It might be time-consuming to repeat your details to several providers but you could save plenty.
  
  
• Resist the temptation to add your children to your own insurance. They won't build up no-claims discounts, so will just be delaying the expensive early years until a later date.
  
  
• Adding your parents as named drivers to your policy can cut premiums.
  
  
• Agreeing to pay a higher excess should you need to make a claim will bring the cost of cover down, as will agreeing to a limited number of miles each year.
  
  
• You might not be able to keep your car in a garage, but ask insurers which security devices they approve and how much of a discount they take off your premium.
  

Dig This! JCB goes for speed record.

Check out the JCB dieselmax website, where Britain's favourite yellow digger manufacter is staging an attempt on the world speed record for a diesel powered vehicle.

Although the car doesn't look much like the usual JCB offering, it IS powered by an engine more at home in JCB's range of backhoe loaders. Or rather two of them. And they have souped them up just a little bit with a two stage turbocharger and direct fuel injection system.

They've already done two 300mph runs in a practice with a smaller engine, and this week you can follow along as they go for the official FIA record.

Fraud for the Lord

This is my favourite entry from the US based Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame.

You don't normally consider insurance fraud a higher spiritual calling. But Rev. Roland Gray insists that swindling insurers was part of his ministry.

So now Gray must render unto Caesar 4 1/2 years in jail for a crime spree involving crashed cars, fake accidents and fake falls on banana peels that stole an unholy fortune from insurers.

"I let the Lord lead me and this is the way He instructed me," the Chicago man of the Cloth told reporters.

In fact the Missionary Baptist minister said God "instructed" him to fake 177 accidents in which cars crashed, ran off the road, or supposedly collided with deer or pedestrians. Many claims involved fake injuries.

Gray and his cronies once submitted four claims for four different crashes – all on the same day and involving the same people. A brick supposedly crashed through one car window and injured people who weren't even in town that day.

Gray even involved his own parishioners. He paid for car insurance, then asked a man for a ride and recruited him as part of a fake crash.

He also recruited his brother Elija – who also was a minister – as a fake accident victim.

"Roland and Elijah have had so many X-rays that I wouldn't be surprised if they glowed in the dark," one insurance investigator told reporters.

Gray also filed numerous slip-and-fall accidents in businesses and motels from Wisconsin to Alabama. He and various family members claimed they fell off uneven mattresses and tripped over furniture and banana peels.

All told, Gray raked in nearly half a million dollars in insurance money. He filed mostly small claims with 45 insurers to stay under the radar screen. But his unholy empire finally came crashing down when a chiropractor who created fake injury reports for Gray, let the FBI set up a secret camera in his office to film the schemes.

Did God tell Gray to steal insurance money?

"No I didn't steal nothing. I paid premiums and they (insurers) had a right to pay," he told reporters.

So why did he plead guilty if he was so innocent?

"You know what? Jesus said give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and give unto God the things that are God's, and that's what I did," Gray said.

ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES

As the title suggests, Friday 11th August was that day in the year when all the staff who have worked for Adrian Flux for at least 10 years have a free jolly up to Newmarket Races. Here is PDA’s report on the proceedings.

We all boarded the coach and set off, the true pros amongst us frantically combing the pages of the Racing Post for a 33/1 dead cert while Elliot frantically battled green monsters on his Gameboy. We finally arrived after a torturous hour and a half of listening to the coach radio.

Once into the racecourse it was full steam ahead to the bar, well apart from the women who, having been on a coach for 90 minutes, now needed to queue for the toilet so they could check their hair, lipstick, mascara, perfume, clothing and get re-assurance that their arse didn’t look big in what they were wearing.

Not prone to such bouts of vanity the lads were already eying up their glasses of cold beer, and the birds serving behind the bar.

The first race was due off shortly and the girls were quizzing the guys about critical betting information that would decide where their money went, “Does the jockey look nice?” “Is the horse Irish?” and “The horse was born on my birthday” were all valid reasons in their eyes.

The race was off and everyone was on tiptoes to see how their horse was running, apart from Kev Lee who had been shouted at to “sit down” by the people behind us in the Grandstand who couldn’t see! Towards the end of the race anguished cries could be heard from Catherine O’Sullivan “Why is he hitting the horse with that stick!?” as the jockey did his best to drive the horse to the finishing line.

As is so often the case some nag with no form or breeding came through to win and the amateur punters in our group were patting themselves on the back for their business acumen, ability to spot a future Derby winner and the fact that the jockey was wearing pink!

Back to the bar to lick our wounds and check that there was a cashpoint machine available if things continued in that vein. I’m not saying the drinks were expensive but Phil Harpham enquired about the price of a pint of cider and spent the rest of the night drinking from puddles.

The evening wore on with mixed fortunes for everyone, Kev Lee was on fire and picking winner after winner, he even had a touch when collecting his winnings of £11.88, the bookie gave him £12 and told him to keep the change, awesome! Paul Twite was looking through the card for a one horse race so he could actually pick a winner and Rob Balls had gone off to find a horse vet because he had toothache.

Jools Holland was doing his bit on stage for those who had nothing better to do.

Eventually it was time to board the coach, 30 minutes into the journey and the girls were screaming for a toilet stop, Richard Sim knew of a dogging site just 2 miles ahead where we could pull in. We piled out and Rob Balls headed off into the woods with Helen, not sure why cos the toilet block was just by the coach.

All in all yet another excellent event and, for those of us who have served our 10 year stretch, a welcome reminder that we were just too bloody lazy to find ourselves a proper job!!

This May Save A Life

Safety Council has done

extensive testing on a newly

designed seat belt. Results

show that accidents can be

reduced by as much as 45%

when the belt is properly

installed. Correct installation

is illustrated below.......

Those safe women drivers

People might start to think that we have some kind of downer on women drivers, we really don't! But I keep getting more of these sent to me, all the same. These have a bit of an off-road theme. As you can see, the ladies are wearing entirely appropriate gear!

So, come on girls, prove the statistics right and send me some pics of some male drivers getting themselves into this kind of pickle, and I'll post them!

0-60 in 4 seconds, 135mpg, 1 moving part

This is the Tesla Roadster, a brand new sportscar that runs on batteries. 6,831 of them. Previous attempts at electrical propulsion, have not met with the greatest of success, think Sinclair C5. But with all due respect to Sir Clive, his effort had two basic flaws. First it didn't look like a proper car. Second it had all the finesse, speed and performance of my nan's electric scooter.

This time, things are different. The Tesla will keep up with a Ferrari and accelerate from 0-60 in 4 seconds. The motor is a 3-phase 4-pole induction type, which has just 1 moving part, so the car should also be very reliable. On a full charge the car will run 250 miles between charges, which take up to 3 hours to charge up. And to make sure it looked the part, they got Lotus to design it.All the technical stuff is here.

The stupidest hobby so far...

The good old french are at it again. Four french youths have been arrested in Spain after deliberately jumping in front of motorists on a busy motorway.

Their intention appears to have been to film the reaction of stunned motorists on their mobile phones as they swerved to avoid the brain dead garlic muncher appearing without warning in front of their windscreen.

They'd better not try it here - most british drivers would probably have only one reaction if faced with a grinning Gaul brandishing a mobile. Foot to the floor!

Travel Agents Rip You Off - OFFICIAL

You're sure to have heard all the news about the government investigation into the travel insurance that the high street travel agents shark onto unsuspecting holidaymakers. If not try here, here or here.

Basically if you buy your travel insurance from the agent, you are paying too much - that's according to Which?, who reckon that on a single trip policy for a family of four, some travel agents are charging as much as £200 more than the cheapest rates on the market. For a single trip!

No wonder some market commentators have suggested that the agencies make more money on the insurance than they do from the holidays.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the agents frequently mis-sell the policies, don't take sufficient details to provide an appropriate level of cover and don't provide sufficient information on the benefits and exclusions. And then, you can bet, they'll try and weasel out of paying up in the event of a claim.

And the self (meaning almost not) regulated nature of the travel agent's policies could leave you without much recourse in the event of a problem. Says Motley Fool's Chris D'Arcy:

"Many holidaymakers are amazed to discover that insurance sold by travel agents and tour operators is not governed by the strict rules on the selling of general insurance laid down by the Financial Services Authority."

Not only that but you wouldn't have recourse to the financial ombudsman either.

The travel agents say that are opposed to stricter regulation because they would have to put their prices up. And they don't seem to be joking.

So now that you know all that, just how dumb do you have to be to take the policy that your travel agent offers you? Especially when you can get a full year's cover for a family of four for just £85*.

* Example quoted is for whole family cover including personal belongings and cancellation cover, travelling within the EU, no golf, winter sports or business trip add-ons, both parents are under 50.

Q: How do you cut all crime by 43%?

A: Crack down on uninsured drivers.

It seems unlikely doesn't it, but anyone who thinks that driving whilst uninsured is a victimless crime should read this. Police in Hounslow launched a pilot zero-tolerance clampdown on cars without valid insurance. After removing 330 vehicles from the street, crime in all categories across the pilot area nosedived.

Pilot schemes are also underway in Scotland, and crushing uninsured cars will soon be common practice across the country.

Here at Adrian Flux we have a reputation for bringing down premiums for the types of drivers who traditionally pay more than average, so son't let that be your excuse for going without cover. Read our top money saving tips for younger drivers, or read our info for convicted drivers. Then give us a call for your own quote.

Blogs you love to hate!

A couple of cool blogs -

Hopefully no-one reading this will end up before the magistrates of West London, but if you do, maybe you'll find yourself before this personage.

Perhaps you'd like to play a game of sentence the insurance dodger here...
(answers)


And here's one from a parking enforcement officer.

Kawasaki Ninja

Check out this fab european ad for the Kawasaki Ninja. It made me laugh anyway. Needless to say it wasn't approved for TV audiences...

Based on the weight & bhp quoted, we reckon that the featured bike is the ZX-6RR - the most extreme 600 on the planet, described by What Bike as "a boss-nosed, shark-finned assault on your senses with an addictive induction roar, razor sharp steering and faultless handling."

I asked Kev from our BikeSure department what it would cost to insure one of these. For an average rider the premium would be just £260.(*) That's on one of our special superbike schemes.

You can get your own quote at www.bikesure.co.uk

(*Our average rider is a 36 year old factory worker with 3 years no claims and lives in an average risk postcode. He's just bought the bike and the policy excess is £350)