Posts tagged aa
The AA, Nitrous & Bogus Stats
Apr 8th
You may have seen, all over the BBC, that The AA president, Edmund King, has been banging on about Nitrous Oxide (aka NOS) on the premise that “Modified cars ‘could put lives at risk’”.
It seems that Mr King would like to see legislation which would limit the ability of young drivers to carry out modifications to their cars.
He says:
If you then put [young drivers] in a modified car… then accidents are much more likely to happen.
There’s just one problem with that – it’s complete rubbish. You would have thought that an august institution with a history as proud as the AA would have checked their facts before spouting uninformed opinion to the press (why didn’t they just AAsk us?)*.
Because, since modified car insurance is one of the things we know an awful lot about, and since we keep careful records of things like claims and accidents, we actually know the truth. And the truth of the matter is this:
Young drivers of modified cars are on average 20% less likely to have an accident and make a claim than young drivers in cars with a standard specification.
What are the reasons for this – well there are several:
- Modders are enthusiasts, more knowledgable about cars than their peers
- They love their cars and take special care of them.
- The money spent on their cars is a significant proportion of their income, so they want to protect their investment.
- Modified car owners have also invested a lot of time in their vehicle – the prospect of doing all that work again in the event of a crash is not what they want.
- And in doing the modifications, the owners are getting a good understanding of mechanics, and are more likely to spot any maintenance issues too.
So perhaps, rather than calling for a ban, the AA should start campaigning to make modifications compulsory for young drivers – or more seriously for car maintenance to feature more heavily in the driving test. They should, at least, think before alienating many of the most enthusiastic of the motorists whom they claim to represent.
Good old The AA…
You can always rely on them…
*For that matter don’t AA Insurance Services keep their own data on this sort of thing?
Auto Express Survey
Jun 20th
The results are in in the Auto Express Driver Power insurance survey for 2008 and we were pleased to finish in a creditable 11th place in the survey, showing last year’s rise from 40th to 17th wasn’t just a flash in the pan.
With this result being the outcome of actual customers responses, we’re especially happy that our customers seem to have a good opinion of us, a testament to all the hard work which has been done in improving the customer experience over the last few years, even though we certainly think there’s room for further improvement.
I think the results are even better for the fact that, as a broker, a certain amount of the customer experience is out of our hands and relies on our panel of insurance providers. Particularly so when you consider that the unusual and specialist cars we often cover are much harder for the insurance companies to deal with, especially if there is a claim.
Because of that, I think the value of dealing through a decent broker is demonstrated when you see that some of the companies on our panel are languishing in the bottom 10 of the rankings – so it seems that you really can get demonstrably better value AND better service by going through a broker, despite what Direct Line would have you believe.
Of course, the broker you choose has a big impact – otherwise Endsleigh, Budget, the AA, Swinton and the Post Office wouldn’t be in the bottom ten.
And now, a la Jeremy Clarkson, I’ll explain why we actually did even better. The top four companies are all, in a way, cheating. I don’t mean that they aren’t doing really well for their customers, because they are. It’s just that if you aren’t an elderly trade union member living in the country, you won’t be able to get a quote with all four. SAGA and RIAS concentrate on the ‘mature’ markets, Frizzell targets only union (and similar organisation) members, and the winner, NFU, will only quote drivers with a rural postcode.
Obviously that’s fair enough, but it does give these companies an easier ride in the survey stakes, because they can tailor their products and their customer experience to their very specific niche. In our case, managing the conflicting expectations of classic car owners, high net worth individuals and modified jap import enthusiasts, for example, is much more of a challenge. Our staff have to learn about hundreds of products, and then have to deal with customers who are so dramatically diverse that they need treating in quite different ways. And it even comes down to things like the hold music – which everyone complains about, but for different and often opposite reasons.
So, all in all, an impressive showing, and for anyone who might have been disappointed by our service in the past: we’ve got much better – it’s official, and we’re aiming to improve even further, so perhaps it’s time to consider giving us another go.