11 Plus Exams Forum

Any advice? My 17 year old son (18 in October) has today passed his test, which is great, until I considered the insurance costs.

I've just looked online and see the cheapest insurance is £1.900. With a black box, with D Line, it is £825, but I don't know if that will limit myself and my husband driving it.

Does anybody have experience of car insurance for 17/18 year olds? Any advice gratefully received.

£825 is about par for the course for a teenage new driver with their own policy and parents as named drivers. (Is the car his, or does it belong to you or your DH?)

Try Admiral Group (includes 2 or 3 other names like Elephant, etc) and look at a multi-car policy. They provide a black box, but only for 3 months, and the premium can only go down, not up depending on how you drive.

Thanks, Sally-Anne. It's our car.

I'll look into the Admiral Group too.

If it's your car then DL is good because Named Drivers get their own No Claims entitlement

It's the same with Admiral, Ken.

Some insurers are simply geared up (excuse the pun) for young drivers, where others aren't. I also found that many of the companies who claim to be "young driver-orientated" were considerably more expensive than some mainstream companies.

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.admiral.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The website above is an illustration only.

A word of warning with Admiral I understand they are one of the cheapest on the market but there have been lots of issues with the way they operate the black boxes and their cancellation charges.A number of customers in litigation and issues raised with the office for fair trading.A work colleague and friend has had personal experience

http://cars.aol.co.uk/2014/02/19/the-hi ... insurance/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

About to embark on this and somebody suggested Endsleigh (?) to me.

We currently have an Admiral multi-car policy and have always found them very helpful, good customer service and very competitive.

Endsleigh have been around for years - they were set up as the "student" insurance company (not sure if they are linked with the NUS?) and were always found on university campuses up and down the country.

I'm not flogging Admiral particularly, but to add our experience to Quasimodo's post and particularly the second link he has added, we were given a black box to use for 3 months.

We all behaved ourselves and drove very carefully. After 3 months, they told us our driving was "gold standard", asked for the box back and gave us a £30 refund on our premium. Not much of a drama, really.

I wouldn't want a box for longer than that though!

My DD has her own insurance on my car with Marmalade. It was the cheapest we could find at the time - about £1,500. I think it really depends where you live. We are just outside London. Friends even just a few miles further out paid a couple of hundred less, and others a few miles closer to London paid a couple of hundred more.

I have a black box & never think twice about it. It doesn't pick up speeding (which I don't do anyway - ok, unless on the motorway!).

My DD's insurance runs out on a few weeks. Now she's at Uni, we won't be renewing it. I think I'll look into short term insurance for the holidays though - anyone any experience of this please?