They're just trying their luck. A good chunk of people probably just renew without even checking the price, let alone shopping around. I'm not sure why they're allowed to do that, but they absolutely do.
Same here, never had a crash or claimed at all and they wanted just over £1,000pa for a 2015 Skoda Yeti - I won't get that for trade-in, what are they on?
Same here, last years premium was £442, this year Hastings upped it to £992, they called it an insurance premium tax. This is on a 1.0 Ford Ka+. I used a comparison site and managed to get it to a little cheaper than last years quote.
When I called Hastings to make sure auto renewal didn't go through they reckoned they could probably match last year's quote, I refused and explained that I didn't like they idea they were taking the piss so just cancel it.
Thats odd. (I work in insurance, backend software dev).
Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) is specifically 12%, its a bit like VAT for insurance. Them saying the tax is causuing it to almost double its absolute bullshit.
100 Premium = 12 tax, total of 112. If your premium is was to double “because of tax”, either they messed up on the tax calculation (say 120% instead of 12% tax would “double” the total)
There was also a change in the last few years regarding “premium walking” where your first year is basically an undercut price, and each year after the premium increases. Now they have to offer the same price to new and existing customers.
They often want to reduce the coverage they offer to achieve this. They will try to reduce millage, the amount of listed drivers, increase excess etc. This gives you a quote that is not comparable to the insurance comparison websites.
Mine nearly doubled too, and using a comparison website I was able to find something close to my current premiums. I phoned direct line to query why it had gone up, cited the better value elsewhere and they magically reduced their quote by £200 without even hesitating.