insurance and declared mileage
 

The daughter has just come home fuming. Last year she renewed her car policy and when asked what mileage she did she said 3,000.

4 months later she changed her job and now has a 160 mile/day commute.

Aware she is going to exceed her declared mileage, she phoned her insurer and they have said. It is a cap, you have already exceeded it and £250 please to go into the next category of <6,000.

She was distraught. I have just given her the money as her income is taken in buying fuel.


I am aware I have always had a declared mileage on my bikes. But nobody has ever asked me to prove my mileage on the 2 offs I have had over the past 10 or so years. so a question to you lot out there.

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

Sounds like they are having a laugh to be honest...you're asked for an estimation of mileage at the time of taking out the policy. I probably wouldn't have bothered declaring tbh.

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

did they ask for the mileage when she insured it... i have only one policy on a specialist policy that required proof of odometer reading, or milleage figure others just ask for estimate miles. reply thats why i said yes but on most normal policy, its never been a problem

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

The problem is they can easily check mot certificates or service records, mot is online now too. Just gives them a reason to wriggle out of a claim.

Someone doing 20k+ a year is considerably higher risk than someone doing less than 3k... I'm suprised your even shocked at the increase.

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

i think if you look in the T+C's it says if you go over and make a claim you have to pay X ammout mine is somthing like £250 per 5000 miles.

when doing my bike insurance it was cheaper to do 10000 miles a year than 3000 lol .

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

3000 is extremely low for an annual car mileage, she probably received a significant discount for that when she took out the policy

That said, I've exceeded the annual mileage limit twice on my car policies now, but both times they've let it go and not charged me extra

How big a jump is she telling them?

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

would it be cheaper to cancel existing insurance and find another insurance company?

The way I've always seen it is that they don't check your mileage when you take the policy out, so in the event of a claim, other than last MOT certificate, how could they verify how many miles you've done?

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

Purely depends on the policy ofcourse. I always read my policies word for word to double check I'm definitely covered, and for three consecutive years there was no wording to do with mileage. The only time mileage came up was when they asked for an estimate of how many I'll be doing this year to the nearest thousand.

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

She only did 3000/year as she worked part time 2 miles from home, now it is 80 miles full time.

To avoid putting miles on her car, we are being a bit naughty. She uses my company car when I do not actually need it (most days) and I go to work on the bike or her car.

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

I make that just shy of 38,000m only for commuting assuming she works 47 weeks p/a, so that's well over 10x the mileage

It could be argued that in 10x the mileage you're 10x as likely to encounter an accident and claim

£250 looks like a pretty good deal tbh:(

Hope it works out, make sure your insurance is straight for her using your car or it'll end up costing you more cash and heartache if something should go wrong...:-?

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

I have a declared mileage insurance policy on a cherished car scheme with a maximum of 5000 miles because I do not drive the car sometimes from week to week! I have just got myself a daily driver and the same insurer has asked about my mileage. I have not declared anything other than the mileage declared from the previous insurance (which was cancelled in favour of the new one). IIRC, a conversation I had with the broker, they memtioned that if I were to claim, the mileage would be checked not only for the current year, but for all the years I was insured by them and if the mileage was greater than the average, the claim would be void.

On my previous daily driver insurance, I decared 22K miles/year and because of some work committments required me to drive to a different office, I would exceed my declaration and simply called them to increase it to 24K miles. They did so without charge or any forefeit - but that was a few years ago and on the renewals, the original declaration was re-instated!

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

OK, I bought my car 6 months old with 10k miles on the clock, it now has about 60K on it, my invoice shows the make model and price, but not the mileage. It will have it's first MOT at the end of July. In that time it has been with Elephant, Swiftcover and Esure. All of them have asked what my annual mileage is, none of them have asked the mileage on the car when I took out the policy. If they ask me for my service book, I tell them I have done all my own servicing because I believe FSH is a false economy, so I don't have a record book.

I crash and make a claim - how does the insurance company know what annual mileage I've done?

Even if the car is of MOT age, so long as the MOT and the insurance are not renewed at the same time, they can't prove bugger all either, unless they asked you to prove what your mileage was when you took out the policy, and what could they accept as proof without sending out a surveyor with a notebook to look at your dashboard?

If I was going over my stated annual mileage due to a change in circumstances I wouldn't tell them, and since they don't tell you the "estimation" you give when you take out the policy is a cap, then they can't enforce it.

Tell them you will write to the FSA if they insist on the £250.

I think they'd have a hard time in court wriggling out of a claim, because somebody had a change in circumstances that increased the mileage half way through the policy.

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

Yes but I said I'd lost my keys!
Despite Grace's conviction that they were in my pocket the guy gave in and left it.
This wasn't in the event of a claim (as in crash) though.

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

I have never had Bennets question my milage[6000 private] on either incident but my classic car insurance asked me for the recorded MOT mileage and what was on the clock at the time of renewal
Cheap option--disconnect the vehicle speedo and buy a cheapo GPS that shows your speed and mileage[£100]

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

remind me to never buy a car off you ! hahahah :smt006

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

nope never, my insurers didn't even ask me what mileage i was going to do ...

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

They probably didn't if you were paying a large premium
Car and bike both on 6000 did not come to £250 for the two

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

Had to vote KeithD as I haven't claimed, but I won't limit my mileage for the sake of saving money. ATM, I have a 2-mile commute and cycle when I'm not being lazy! I have applied for a job with a 30-mile round trip a day. I will still use the bike outside of work, an might decide to go on tour. It is pretty shoddy of them though, to be fair. £250 is probably way over the actual risk increase. NAME AND SHAME!!!!!

Re: insurance and declared mileage
 

I wasn't asked last time I made a claim, but I always declare 10K minimum anyway because the extra costs me pennies at my age and I do a lot of miles some years.