Bike Insurance query

[Mabozza]

I have a bike which I have for sale. Its not selling right now, so I was thinking of insuring it for a couple of months until it eventually sells (or not) and using it to go to the NW200 this year.

My query is - rather than buy a years insurance outright, if I choose to pay monthly and cancel after a few months after I finish using it ot sell it, is there any penalty or obligation to pay the remaining monthly payments? I suspect there is.


Anyone else done this?

thanks!

[stemcsteste]

If you have taken out a Payment plan that is a loan (PremCredit etc) you will have to pay this off still, plus any cancellation fee where applicable

[Mabozza]

stemcsteste said:

If you have taken out a Payment plan that is a loan (PremCredit etc) you will have to pay this off still, plus any cancellation fee where applicable

thats what I thought, probably cheaper to buy a years insurance at £70, use for 3 months then just let it lapse over the remaining 9 months.

[OutInTheShed]

You should cancel the insurance when the bike is sold, you don't want some random person affecting your insurance record.
So I would look for insurance with a low cancellation fee.

The other flaw in the plan is that someone will want to buy the bike between you committing to go to the NW200 and the event itself....

[mcpoot]

OutInTheShed said:

You should cancel the insurance when the bike is sold, you don't want some random person affecting your insurance record.
So I would look for insurance with a low cancellation fee.

The other flaw in the plan is that someone will want to buy the bike between you committing to go to the NW200 and the event itself....

Ok, I'll bite. How is some random person going to affect your insurance? The insurance would be in your name and the random would have no knowledge of ins company, policy no etc.

[sixor8]

Indeed, I've done this when selling a bike if there's only a few months to go and the cancellation fee would have been more than any refund. Cancellation fees vary with companies of course.

I sold a 1997 Honda Prelude last September that was on a classic policy that had been cheap. The cancellation fee was more than half the premium and in any case, they do not usually attract any refund so I just left it running until March this year until it expired, nothing happened.

I've read on several threads on here that the company may be liable if there's an incident afterwards but not seen any evidence.

[Mabozza]

OutInTheShed said:

The other flaw in the plan is that someone will want to buy the bike between you committing to go to the NW200 and the event itself....

I've got my main bike which i was originally going to take to NW200

[Neal H]

I had this situation where the cancellation fee exceeded the refund value, so I told them I would just let it run then. They agreed to cancel the insurance and waive the extra cancellation fee.

[KTMsm]

mcpoot said:

Ok, I'll bite. How is some random person going to affect your insurance? The insurance would be in your name and the random would have no knowledge of ins company, policy no etc.

My understanding is that when you insure a car / bike it's entered on the MID

If you then sell it and don't cancel the insurance and the next owner doesn't insure it and has an accident you may be liable - as it will show as insured, in your name

Equally if the new owner does insure it you can get a letter to confirm whether you still own it or not - I've had it the other way around, I insured a bike and my insurer asked me to prove I owned it by sending them a scan of the V5 in my name, presumably because the last owner didn't want to cancel the policy

I'll add that I think paying to cancel a policy is a scam

[OutInTheShed]

KTMsm said:

My understanding is that when you insure a car / bike it's entered on the MID

If you then sell it and don't cancel the insurance and the next owner doesn't insure it and has an accident you may be liable - as it will show as insured, in your name

Equally if the new owner does insure it you can get a letter to confirm whether you still own it or not - I've had it the other way around, I insured a bike and my insurer asked me to prove I owned it by sending them a scan of the V5 in my name, presumably because the last owner didn't want to cancel the policy

I'll add that I think paying to cancel a policy is a scam

I think that paying to cancel a policy is often a fact of life.
It's paperwork, it's probably manual intervention in an otherwise automated system.
I think if you break it down, the 'premiums' paid by us old sods are more admin costs than actual 'risk money'.
If you cancel relatively early in a policy, then you should hope for some refund.

When you take out insurance, you enter a contract where you agree to notify the insurer if the anything related to the risk changes.
It should not be hard to see the insurer's POV that a different rider is exposing them to a different risk.

In days gone by I've let policies quietly expire after I've sold the vehicle, not sure I'd do it now.

My point was to find a company that offers cheap changes to the policy, some you can change vehicle online for no admin fee for instance. Look for the cheapest over -all price rather than the lowest headline price where they make their money by charging more for changes. Unfortunately it's not always easy to find these charges to make useful comparisons.

[Turkish91]

OutInTheShed said:

In days gone by I've let policies quietly expire after I've sold the vehicle, not sure I'd do it now.

I wouldn’t

https://www.visordown.com/news/general/biker-may-b...

[Dog Star]

If you can administer the policy online just change the reg over to something that doesn’t exist - in my case my old moped that’s just a frame. Bish bosh.