Looking for insurance advice

Thanks to the advice I received here last year I put an order in for an SV650s with Cupar motorcycles which will be ready for collection next Friday. I need to get insurance sorted out for the bike and looking for some advice, I have browsed through the forum however the term 'insurance' comes up a lot and also each person can be quite different - I'd be grateful to hear people's thoughts.

My current situation is that I passed my CBT last July then bought an insured a Honda CBR125 not long after which was 120 pounds third party from Bennetts (fully comprehensive was 360 odd pounds). I passed my big mike test this week and have had a full car license for 11 years. The bike is going to be parked in a locked garage in a quiet residential area, I'm looking for fully comprehensive cover although I'm undecided about EU cover as I haven't even ridden the bike yet. I like the idea of taking it to the continent but unsure of how much I will actually do so, I may find that I don't actually want to do long mileage on it.

I entered my details into Bennetts and they came up with a quote of just under 300 pounds to my surprise, I then tried the Tesco compare out of interest and it came up with quotes as low as 211 pounds from 'ebike'. Royal and Sun Alliance had a few brokers including official Suzuki insurance at around 235 pounds (no EU cover) then the next step up was 250 pounds for 'RSA' based brokers such as AA which included EU cover.

Now I realise you often get what you pay for so I'm not just jumping on the cheapest quote, I'd appreciate any recommendations for certain insurers or those to stay away from.

The additional problem I have is the existing Bennetts policy is only six months old, I assume I can change it to the new bike or cancel it and pay a fee either way. I don't know how this works with a noclaims bonus however as I'd leave Bennetts with just six months no claims and be starting a new 12 month policy, am I just going to lose this?

Really looking forward to getting the bike although I'm concerned about taking it up the A9 next week as the car was a complete mess with the amount of salt on the road.

Thanks for any advice,
John

i would just go with the cheapest

have you taken the excess into account? as it may be a few hundred £ differant

also, i told my insurance that my bike is garaged, so if it gets stolen from outside my house, im not covered,

I've gone with a voluntary excess of 500 pounds although with Bennetts dropping this down to 0 only raised the overall cost by ten pounds. The bike genuinely is going to be in a proper locked garage.

John

mine is aswell, but if you just park out side the house for 5 mins, its not insured


i would lower the excses for the sake of a tenner

[yorkie_chris]

You might be better off leaving the bennets policy to run its course rather than trying to cancel it, dunno really.

Try shop around as much as you can, the tescos thing got me best deal compared to ringing around and cheaper than other comparison websites.

Uh-oh, Bennetts, aren't they the ones everyone has problems with??

Anyway, you only get 1 year of no claims once you complete the year, walk away any time in between and you'll get nothing. Also, Bennetts will probably try and charge you even more money to cancel the policy, instead of giving you a refund, if I am to believe the numerous threads on the subject?!

Originally Posted by hovis

i

also, i told my insurance that my bike is garaged, so if it gets stolen from outside my house, im not covered,

not 100% sure about this, i had car insurance a few years ago where the car was "normally garaged", one night it wasn't and some neighbours tiles fell from their roof in storms and wrote the car off, insurance paid fully for it. not the same but.....

Originally Posted by muffles

Uh-oh, Bennetts, aren't they the ones everyone has problems with??

Anyway, you only get 1 year of no claims once you complete the year, walk away any time in between and you'll get nothing. Also, Bennetts will probably try and charge you even more money to cancel the policy, instead of giving you a refund, if I am to believe the numerous threads on the subject?!

One of the reasons for this thread is that Bennetts don't seem to have a good reptuation around here, the garage didn't seem to think much of them either.

John

agreed - i got royally screwed when i got the gixer with the £99 insurance and cancelled bennets.

Originally Posted by mike_avfc

agreed - i got royally screwed when i got the gixer with the £99 insurance and cancelled bennets.

What did they charge exactly?