Replacement windscreen hiking up insurance quote – is this new?

Car insurance companies have been making a loss for years so they’re clearly not taking the piss.  Complex cars that cost a lot to fix – not just windscreens, loads of parts are complex now where they didn’t used to be.  Wing mirrors are motorised, heated, with blind spot sensors in.  A crash bad enough to set the airbags off has trashed a whole load of the interior, not just the bumper.  They’re wider so a lot more scrapes I’d guess.  And relatively ‘ordinary’ cars have acceleration that would have been in supercar territory a few decades ago.  Even more so for electric cars.

Insurance co risk profiles are a bitch though.  Our house insurance went up by 260% this year. previous insurer had dropped out of market. the killer for us is ‘working from home’ with visitors – no matter that the business is in the basement and has it’s own entrance (which means vistors never go into the main part of the house), or that it’s no different really in what happens or frequency to everyone else’s courier deliveries, it massively ups the premium we pay.

As someone who’s spent the last 20 years earning a living by pricing insurance, I’m changing my LinkedIn job title to “grifting shyster”

Have you changed career now to Tory politician?? 😉

(Yes, yes, I’m aware other politicians are grifting shysters too…)

What I don’t understand is why a job being done under an insurance claim costs so much more than a privately funded one?

Is the extra paperwork that arduous?

Garages exploiting the fact it’s the insurance company paying

With checking the renewal data, the ‘comparator’ website is now asking for windscreen claims ! So it all adds up.

They’ve been asking the question on the websites for as long as I can remember.
Have you had a claim in the last ‘X’ years, yes , click on drop down menu and  select windscreen

Garages exploiting the fact it’s the insurance company paying

Did you not read what I said about what’s involved in fitting a windscreen? Especially one with heating elements in? There are cars with all of the radio receiver elements built into the glass as well – do you seriously believe that such things will cost the same as a screen for a twenty year old Fiesta? Scratch that, my old Mk.1 Ford Puma, W-reg, so it would be 24 years old, had a heated screen. A replacement screen then was £700. Bugger-all to do with the insurance company paying, it’s what you would pay if the insurance company wasn’t.