i am insured through renault as thats what my last car was through i am paying around 800 i am 21 with 1 years no claims and i have a s with tints etc mini quote wa 1680 they maybe are better for older drivers oh and i am also in a e* postcode poor me.
My suggestion is to call your local dealership and ask a BMW salesperson (or the Receptionist) what the BMW Insurance phone number is.
Mind you, my experience of MINI Cover/BMW Insurance/Honda Insurance/etc is that they are always controlled by a 'major' like esure or Norwich Union and, occasionally, it's cheaper to deal direct with them: instead of going under the banner of "BMW", "MINI" or "Honda" (can you believe that I actually wanted a Honda Civic Type-R instead of my MCS!!! I must have been on the Stoopid Juice in those days).
Not a problem Wayne.
I shall try BMW insurance just out of curiousity and heard good things about them here. I agree that all these so called manufacturers insurance schemes are underwritten by the same bloody companies. Gotta try though
There must be some MCS Hartge owners here with insurance recommendations
Who is it that actually modifies your MCS to become a MCS+Hartge? Is it your BMW/MINI dealer, a Hartge franchise or yourself?
Either way, I'd start by asking whoever I'd bought my Hartge 'product' and services from for case references from other customers - after all - they must have insured theirs?! Surely?!
You take one Mini Cooper S and take it to Birds in uxbridge. They are they distributors/resellers of all things Hartge (known for BMW tuning) and Carlsson (known for Mercedes tuning). Birds then perform the Hartge Mini upgrade where ECU maps are changed and pulleys on Superchargers are changed/modified. Volia one 210-215Bhp MCS.
I have been meaning to speak to them re: Insurance.
We are going thru same stuff just now. Our local Mini dealer is now doing the upgrades which means we don't have to travel to get it done.
Re insurance we have now spent a week phoning around and eventually came out at £757 with Adrian Flux try www.adrianflux.co.uk
The worst was £1,100 !! At present Rachel pays £400 fopr the standard MCS so it almost doubles with the conversion.
The issue seems to be the %age increase in that anything over 25% seems to be treated as a nutters car, but then again when you drive it you will see why !
You haven't got tonymccandless's Hartge MINI Cooper S on your database have you? I wonder how outrageous the quotes would be on that little monster. Worth a try I guess...
We have just renewed at a cost of £550 on wait for it a Cooper (not even an S)
Me 35, 9 years 9NCB and fully clean, Kristina 40 driving for 24 years (in america you can pass your test at 16) but uk licence since Sept 02 again no accidents or convictions.
Parked on the road in east London.
Direct Line got the quote down to £435 but when I rang to confirm they decided that the MINI x-lites I added constituted a modification (despite the fact that they could have been added at the factory) and they upped the quote to £602 (might even consider re-instating the original wheels)!!!
Bell direct - £553 was who we went with in the end - I got fed up repeating myself - however last year our premium went up £50 for the pepper pack and Leather however on renewal was told that this ws not listed!!! - the pepper pack and leather again added £50 to the premium as Bell had got down to £503. Best of all the extras are not even covered !!!
Next car is gonna be bog standard base spec - I reckon they are taking us for a ride on the MINI - or alternatively how many people are under insured.
Considering we were quoted £1200 for a P1 I reckon over £500 for a standard cooper is fidiculous.
Indi Blue with white bits, 15" pepper pots with 185/65 15 NCT 5 Tyres, Pepper pack, leather, air, trip, alarm, CD boost & TLC!!
I know what you mean when you say that "they are taking us for a ride". My best quote is seen elsewhere on this thread. My best quote for a medium/heavily modified MINI Cooper (like yours) was £420 again from esure.
Unfortunately I think in general car insurance is a pain in the backside and it just costs too much. I feel that we can all blame those injury compensation companies and the 'blame culture' that we in the UK are inheriting from the USA. The cost of insurance, in general, across the board is escalating, regardless of personal circumstances and histories.
One final thought, years ago I used to buy insurance from Insurance Brokers and they used to do all the 'leg-work' for us. Nowadays there are 100's of Direct insurance companies and we are all bombarded/enpowered because of that fact: along with the web. You should try http://www.insurancequotes.org.uk and another one I heard about the other day called http://www.confused.com, which I think just about sums-up insurance here in the UK!
There was another thread kicking around recently about insurance which I posted on (might try and find it).
Basically, I took out cover with Admiral as gave me a good quote. I phoned to confirm a couple of details and they asked if I had the Chilli pack. When I said yes they upped the premium by about £50 (I said it was £150 on the other thread - I think I was just getting my knickers in a twist and my maths had gone to pot). The insurance docs came through and they had listed the DS metallic paint option as a "Respray (different colour)", the front fogs as "Rally/spot lights", and listed the 17" alloys as "Alloy wheels (optional extra)" as if it didn't have alloys as standard - didn't seem quite right.
Anyway, the point is that someone on the other thread (I'll have to find it to thank him) replied that I should be careful as Admiral would only repair/replace the car to standard spec. So, if the car gets nicked, I get a standard S without the £2k+ of options!
I checked the small print and he's right. That's quite shocking! I stated the car's value as £16.5k, I was charged an extra premium for my factory fitted options, yet they won't replace the car to it's full value!
I phoned Admiral to cancel my policy and they tried to charge me 20% of the annual premium (after 9 days cover). They insisted that I would have been told this when I took out the cover (would I really have signed up to an effective excess of £2.5k?) and they had the tapes of the call to prove this. I asked them to dig out these tapes (which would have formed the basis of the contract) to prove this and they said they'd get back to me. Of course, I had to chase them.
They then said that I would only be charged for the 9 days cover I had had. No apology for deliberately misleading me, calling me a liar when I said I hadn't been informed of the unreasonable terms, and not even calling me back to let me know they were in the wrong.
Oh my lord, my blood's boiling again.
Anyway, upshot is that I got a quote from esure yesterday. About £30 cheaper than Admiral and as long as the car hasn't been modified since leaving the factory they are happy. Doesn't help you guys out there with the aftermarket mods (and I'm getting me a Hartge conversion once the 3 year MINI warranty runs out) but esure seem a good bet for standard cars.
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