Question for Insurance....
 

thanks for looking my thread..
I have few questions for renew my insurance..
oh first of all, I had an big huge accident my car and I cover the insurance
(Dec.14th/07) and I'm trying to renew it but I have to pay 75% surcharge or something like that..

my question is

1) One of my best buddy told me that what if I don't drive till 2010, does my insurance is get lower? ( I mean basic 0%?)

2) what if I use my friends name on my car ( if it's possible, I'll put my name on 2nd driver), does it still effect my insurance?

thanks guys.. I need this answer ASAP.. ( can't sleep at all hahaha)

2)...you are commiting fraud. ICBC will invalidate your insurance if they find you are NOT the primary driver. They also charge people in Civil Court for the fraud. You are legally required to state the name of the primary operator...and that would be you. They have taken several people to court for this and the judgements agains fraud artists have been in the tens of thousands of dollars. I remember seeing a father being fined something like $80,000 for saying he was the driver, and not his son. This usually happens after a crash and you are found liable for all the crash damage as well as you had no insurance in effect because of the fraud. Don't go there.

1) Call ICBC / call your autoplan agent

2) Just as zulutango said. One thing to note is that ICBC has its own provincial special constables investigating fraud cases, so it's not worth the risk.

You get 5% discount for each year of accident free driving. I'm not sure about the surcharge...best to just go on yellow pages and grab and insurance agent and ask them.

If you put your friend's name on your insurance, ICBC will use whoever has the crappiest discount. So, if you have 10% and your friend has 40%, ICBC will give you 10% regardless, I believe.

You preimum is going to be back at 0% in 3 years after the Claim.

correct me if im wrong, but you get ur discounts every driving year in which you are insured with your insurance, so by not registering under your insurance, your premium will stay the same and no go down.

no?

discount is counted regardless of whether you have a vehicle registered in your name or not.

But regardless, I think it's just 5% extra discount each year so it would take 8 years accident free to get to 40%.

1, yes your insurance goes down every year from your L licence date. so every year you wait, you're insurance will be cheaper... after 3 years you'll be back to where you left off.

B.C. drivers will be required to pay an extra $25 on their car insurance beginning May 1, if their family members other than the registered owner also drive the vehicle.

The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) said it's introducing the new fee because 22 per cent of its claims involve drivers who are not the registered owner or principal operator.


http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-col...c.html?ref=rss



So if you pay the extra $25, you'll be okay to drive another family member's car?

^I believe thats what my dad is doing. Pays about that amount for me to drive.

It's still fraud if you drive more than 50% of the time.

Unfortunately, I'd put money on it that 90% or greater of the "N" vehicles parked outside of lower mainland highschools (and probably the rest of the province as well) are in that situation, where the parents are paying for the insurance (and probably the vehicle too) and their names are on the papers as being the main drivers, but the child[ren] are the principle operators of the vehicle, thereby committing fraud.

I personally know of about a dozen high risk drivers who had the car in mummy or daddy's name because of the high (rightly so!) premium cost. I also know that ICBC refused to pay out claims on their crashes and went after the parents for civil fraud.

When I witnessed fraudulant vehicle registration ( in most cases it's pretty obvious to anyone with a brain...not too many 50 year old ladies drive a slammed Integra or 5 litre with $20,000 stereo system and underglo) ) I would inform ICBC and they flagged the driver/owner file and sent the owners paperwork telling them they could be procecuted. You now have to sign legal papers saying you know it is fraud to falsify the registration.

If they haven't fixed it yet, there's an interesting glitch in the system... if you register and insure a second car while your first one is still registered, its insurance will start at your full discount (40%, or whatever it would be for the number of years you've been driving). I found this out by accident (pardon the pun) when I went to insure a second vehicle while my primary one - at 10% surcharge - was off the road, but still insured... and ICBC's system came up with the discounted rate. No fraud or misrepresentation on my part - this was ICBC's own computer system pulling up my record and providing the rate...

The Autoplan agent at the time said it was actually not uncommon, in her experience, for people with high premiums to buy a beater, register that with their higher rate, then register their main car at the full discount, and then take the beater off the road and cancel its insurance.

Now of course, this was 10-15 years ago, and one would think ICBC would have plugged this little loophole... but part of me wouldn't be surprised if it still exists.

It's not a glitch, or a loophole. It's part of the system. The tradeoff is that in BC you can't take out one policy and apply it to multiple vehicles (like you can in other juridictions).

And yes, the autoplan agent was right. Except you can't take the beater off the road and cancel it. If you do, you'll get a bill for the increased premium on your 2nd car. The beater needs to stay insured all year.

That may be the "glitch" part that they've fixed, because at the time (and mind you, this was 10+ years ago) that apparently wasn't the case (at least according to the Autoplan agent).

OOps... didn't read what was quoted...

I actually know a few people who have taken advantage of this...

You can insure your car under someone elses name you juat have to make sure that when your doing the insurance that you specify that you will be the principal operator of the vehicle and not your buddy. I did it with my old company car last year. The company owned the truck but i was the principal operator and it was under the companies insurance, not mine.

If there is a problem with the discount, sometimes, even if the person with the surcharge is the principle operator, the discount will still be affected.

Same story in a joint ownership, if one person has a good discount, and the second person has a surcharge, the discount on that vehicle will be somewhere in the middle.


**As the for $25 thing, it is no implemented into the ICBC session manager, because they were/are still working on it. It is postponed until further notice**

Sorry to bump this thread but..

Its been over 3 years since my at-fault claim and I got a letter to renew my insurance. However, the rate is has not gone back to what it was before.
Do I have to call ICBC to get them to change it back, or will it change by itself eventually?

It's more like 6 years to go back to 0%. You get a -30% ding on your insurance for an at fault accident, I believe. You get back 5% each year, so that's 6 years to get back to 0%. Find out what percentage your rate got hit by and then you'll be able to figure out what your discount should be. Also, the rates go up each year too so maybe it is back to what it was before, but insurance is just more expensive. It tells you on your letter what your discount (or premium) is so you can see if you are back to 0% or not.

sorry but that's wrong... after an at-fault accident you get however many points as per the claim-rated scale... so if you're at 5% discount, and have an at fault crash, you get 6 points and go up to a 55% surcharge. as per ICBC's policy, after 3 years of driving with no at-fault accidents, you go back to your previous discount level. you can't go back to a surcharge after 3 years. the 5% a year thing kicks in after the 3 years, which means that it would take you about 11 years to get to a 40% discount, instead of 8 years it would have originally if you didnt have an at fault accident...

Didn't know that. I was just told in the past that your discount goes down like 5% each year so if you were at 30% surcharge, it would take 6 years to get back to even. Never been in an at fault accident and just typed what my friend told me happened to him many years ago.

You pay the surcharge for 3 years, 5% less each year, then you go back to your previous rating. you go down 5% each year you do not have a claim. Check out "claim rated scale" on their website, or ask your broker. RCubed, if it has been 3 years or more since your claim, call ICBC, or have your autoplan agent call when you renew. They didn't adjust mine either when mine should have dropped, had to call and it was fixed.