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Anyone with hastings smart miles insurance?

So i'm just wondering if anyone else is with hasting smart miles insurance? I'v been looking around for insurance for my car and they are by far the cheapest I could find online which has led me to think why are they that cheap and the cheapest out of all other insurance companies?

Is there anything they are hiding? I have read the small print and so on, they do fit a black box in the car but i'm fine with that and some other things which i'm fine with as well, but maybe there is something they do later on that makes them a bad insurance company and that's why they are so cheap? Maybe bad customer service for example?

So anyone have any experiance with them? And does anyone advise against them and anything I should look out for with them?

Thanks.
Original post by ramo55
So i'm just wondering if anyone else is with hasting smart miles insurance? I'v been looking around for insurance for my car and they are by far the cheapest I could find online which has led me to think why are they that cheap and the cheapest out of all other insurance companies?

Is there anything they are hiding? I have read the small print and so on, they do fit a black box in the car but i'm fine with that and some other things which i'm fine with as well, but maybe there is something they do later on that makes them a bad insurance company and that's why they are so cheap? Maybe bad customer service for example?

So anyone have any experiance with them? And does anyone advise against them and anything I should look out for with them?

Thanks.


Please don't go anywhere near them. Check out this thread I made a few months ago:

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=59016163&postcount=1

You're right, the policy is cheaper than others and looks like a good deal initially, but you will pay through the nose in terms of the stress it will bring you. Their black box scoring system is completely crazy - as I showed in my thread, I did 87% of my driving before 10PM but I still got a score of 1/100 for that section. Similarly, if you live in a hilly area or city, be prepared for your braking score to drop.

They will then send you emails threatening to cancel your policy with only a few days notice - it is impossible to get your score up once it's gone down, despite what they tell you. You'll spend hours on hold waiting to talk to one of their advisers, who are polite enough, but clueless about how the black box system works and no real help whatsoever. I ended up cancelling the policy and paying a hefty cancellation fee, but it's been worth it since I no longer have to stress about their crap.

Trust me, it's definitely worth paying a few hundred quid more for a non-black box policy and avoiding the headache which comes from dealing with this particular company or black boxes on general.
Reply 2
Original post by Phagocyte
Please don't go anywhere near them. Check out this thread I made a few months ago:

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=59016163&postcount=1

You're right, the policy is cheaper than others and looks like a good deal initially, but you will pay through the nose in terms of the stress it will bring you. Their black box scoring system is completely crazy - as I showed in my thread, I did 87% of my driving before 10PM but I still got a score of 1/100 for that section. Similarly, if you live in a hilly area or city, be prepared for your braking score to drop.

They will then send you emails threatening to cancel your policy with only a few days notice - it is impossible to get your score up once it's gone down, despite what they tell you. You'll spend hours on hold waiting to talk to one of their advisers, who are polite enough, but clueless about how the black box system works and no real help whatsoever. I ended up cancelling the policy and paying a hefty cancellation fee, but it's been worth it since I no longer have to stress about their crap.

Trust me, it's definitely worth paying a few hundred quid more for a non-black box policy and avoiding the headache which comes from dealing with this particular company or black boxes on general.


Thanks for the reply! I actually did see your thread before posting this, but I thought that might be a one off situation and maybe you just got unlucky with them. The problem with this whole situation is the money. They offer £1500 for insurance, the cheapest non black box insurer costs £2400 so that is a massive difference. I'm just unsure really what to do at this point, it's a pretty hard choice beause of how cheap it is but obviously I don't want any of the hassle that comes along with them.

If we put how bad the black box is to one side, is there anything else wrong with them or is it just the black box thing that's the biggest problem with them? Because I mean, I can't be 100% sure if the same scores will happen to me unless I start driving, am I right?

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