Remap and insurance

Should I buy or Say Goodbye

  • Total voters
    26


Never heard it refered to as 'insurance' before /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif
 
Just to put things in perspective I decided to see if my modified cars premium was good value - well I had quite a surprise, as mentioned earlier I have to fork out £555 for my @185bhp 2.0tdi but look at what quick standard cars I could have for less !!!!

A3 3.2 (250bhp) - £448
Cupra R (225bhp) - £366
Golf GTi (200bhp) - £364

Makes you think - but then again if I had any of the above no doubt I would be wanting to remap those as well so irrelevant really /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
But how many insurers will LOWER your premium if you get more effective brake discs or pads fitted which decrease your stopping distance, or saftey harnesses instead of the normal seatbelts reducing the risk of serious injuries?

So it works both ways.
 
......they will say tough, but maybe offer you some of your premium back!!

A lot of the stuff in this thread is BS IMO! If your car is modified, as many of ours are, you NEED to tell your insurance company or your insurance IS void!! Period. Then you run the risk of being done for no insurance as well as losing you car, /house if someone sues you!
As for all the comments about why does a remap make you drive differently........WTF......why do you get a remap........er to go faster I would submit, the same as you buy a more powerful car to go quicker. Whether it be ultimate top speed or just acceleration through the gears, a more powerful version of the same basic car will always be a higher risk to the insurance business, its quicker!
Just not worth the risk IMO, if you shop around you can get good deals. if you dont you may get away with it for years and years and years, but leave it long enough and you will get caught out and it will ruin your day for sure!
 
ok what if you bought an audi S3 which had a REVO remap on it but the previous owner switched the settings back to stock performance using an SPS switch. So you, the new owner doesnt know any different- it performs the same as a stock audi S3 etc but still had the REVO code, and you was involved in an accident?! you wouldnt know any different if it had the remap done but they went into great depth to find the remap, i find this highly unlikey....

REVO claims it is undetectable, it works in roundabouts how some people can say some modifications stop the car better (better brake pads), uprated tyres with alloys, the list goes on...so really should it lower your insurance premium ??? lets face it insurance companies rob us blind but its better to be safe than sorry...

personally i wouldnt say to my insurance that i had a REVO which they claim is undetectable and switchable but thats my opinion....
 
Its all very sketchy, insurance companies are unlikely to bother looking for a remap they really are.

Big visual differences are a bit different, but anything on your car thats made by the manufacturer you can generally get away with.

The insurance company also has to claim that the mod could have caused the accident if they're not to pay out at all.

More often the case is they refuse to pay out the value of the mods.

Of course it all depends just what has happened, if you drive like a **** and kill somebody it doesnt matter how many mods are or arent on your car you're insurance will be void anyway
 
i totally agree Rodenal, drive like a **** and you will be punished and should be punished
 
REVO claims it is undetectable, it works in roundabouts how some people can say some modifications stop the car better (better brake pads), uprated tyres with alloys, the list goes on...so really should it lower your insurance premium ??? lets face it insurance companies rob us blind but its better to be safe than sorry...

personally i wouldnt say to my insurance that i had a REVO which they claim is undetectable and switchable but thats my opinion....[/quote]

I agree totally! They all rip you off, and really for nothing, if your a good driver and never claim you pay so much money for ****** all. my old insurance company had a claim against me, wasn't my fualt so they didnt pay out to the other driver, but because someone had claimed i lost my no claims bonus, costing me more because of someone else who couldn't drive!
 
Maps are detectable. Relatively easily using Vag com even, even when they are switched back.
Just on the flash reader whihc will increase each time its switched on and off.

Insurance assessor only has to stick a temp boost guage on the dv take off and he will soon see its making more boost than stock, hell most of them will be able to tell by the noise the motor makes, even without driving it!

why give them the excuse, if they check and something looks fishy, they just keep checkinig until they find it if they want to.

How much does a remap actually add to the insurance cost....? I suspect those that have not declared it have not even bothered asking!

Just think how you would feel if some chavved up corsa with noisy bits and a modded motor hits you and its still insured as a 1.4 stock one.......insurance dont pay out, you lose your claim or at least NCB!! You'd be on here slagging him off, rightly so!
So what it the difference between that and an extra 50hp form a remap...?

If the answer is just its better hidden.......sorry, that aint good enough, its still no insurance and still messes people's days/ lives up!! You guys are mad if you play about with maps and dont tell the insurance company, you may as well not bother with insurance period!!

And NO, on a stock car, with everyhting declared, driver details, offences, car details etc all above board, you will not have VOID insurance if you "drive like a ****" and kill someone. You proabbly wont get insurance too cheap again, but you WILL have been insured!
Same as if you are stupid enough to drink and drive and have a crash,....you are still insured as that is part of the risk they covere you for, ie being a twonk and drinking and driving!
Just hope you guys with undeclared remaps dont hit me! Because I bet I would be able to tell, and if I could, I'd probably raise my suspicions ot my insurance who'd tell yours!! Then we'd all lose out!
 
You should definately declare it, as long as your with a specialist insurer it wont cost alot extra, Adrian Flux charged me £60 extra for my remap. Its the only mod that has actually increased the premium, I have declared everything and all the other mods have been free.
 
Edward, if you are a good driver and never claim, you ask why you get screwed and pay so much on price.......its becuse of all the twonks driving about with either NO or invald insurance!!! That's the whole point of insurance, they spread the risk against all the claims and policyholders. The more people that claim and claim larger amounts the worse it is for the rest of us that dont claim!
 
A friend actually saved £50 by declaring the remap and switching to Adrian Flux, so it may be worthwhile shopping around...
 
"And NO, on a stock car, with everyhting declared, driver details, offences, car details etc all above board, you will not have VOID insurance if you "drive like a ****" and kill someone. You proabbly wont get insurance too cheap again, but you WILL have been insured!
Same as if you are stupid enough to drink and drive and have a crash,....you are still insured as that is part of the risk they covere you for, ie being a twonk and drinking and driving!"


No that isnt correct im afraid. If the police convict you of any major driving offence (dangerous driving drink driving driving under the influence of another substance) You will not be insured. The person you hit will.

You would get shafted for every penny and be in serious risk of a jail sentence.

I used to work in an insurance claims dept, i know what im talking about
 
rodenal said:
"And NO, on a stock car, with everyhting declared, driver details, offences, car details etc all above board, you will not have VOID insurance if you "drive like a ****" and kill someone. You proabbly wont get insurance too cheap again, but you WILL have been insured!
Same as if you are stupid enough to drink and drive and have a crash,....you are still insured as that is part of the risk they covere you for, ie being a twonk and drinking and driving!"


No that isnt correct im afraid. If the police convict you of any major driving offence (dangerous driving drink driving driving under the influence of another substance) You will not be insured. The person you hit will.

You would get shafted for every penny and be in serious risk of a jail sentence.

I used to work in an insurance claims dept, i know what im talking about
Click to expand...
So the other party will be COVERED you mean.......not "insured". They should be insured themsleves for 3rd party min, as anyone out there should be, but they claim off the INSURED parties insurance, ie the twonk who is DD'ing..! I see what you mean and you are right, but so am i, if you DD, you are still "insured" (if you have done all the insurace stuff correct) in the eyes of the law, ie minimum 3rd party so anyone you hit or hurt is not out of pocket.
Your insurace is not VOID as it would be if you dont declare mods or driver convictions etc.... when the injured party gets nothing apart from maybe a bit form the uninsured loss scheme..?

Anyway, if you used to work in a claims dept, you should know a bit better than most the appalling results of arrogant fools driving about without insurace or with void insurace, so surely you should be saying its a mugs game to remap and not tell them....?
Anyway to drive a remapped or otherwise performace tuned car without declaring it as you are legally not to mention morally oligated to do, is just selfish IMO. Sorry if that upsets any of you, I just hope you dont hit me one day though!! I just cannot see why its even worth the risk. Some guy on anohter site asked whether he should declare 5ks worth of big turbo conversion, he was only 20 and was afraid he could not afford the premium........but HE had just had the 5k conversion done, not bought a car with it on!! ***!
Like the guy said above, shop around to proper people that know what they are doing and it should not cost too much to add a remap on your policy.
 
Well on the remap issue we never once had an assesor come back saying a car had been chipped and we should reject the claim.

Usually we were more interested in the garage's estimates for repair and whether the repair was economical, these guys arent actually out to spot your mods and to try their best not to pay out a claim, their job is to asses the garages estimates for repair. At the same time should you have done something visable to your car that shouldnt have been there then it is very likely insurance would be deemed void or that the modified part would not be covered(far more likely in smaller claims).

However your point on the 3rd party in case of voided insurance is a little bit of a grey area. We would have honoured the third party's expenses, but taken the driver of the now void policy to court, usually alongside a criminal case(i presume as only the very serious accidents were deemed important enough to risk the expense to us.)

Dont get me wrong in no way am i condoning not declaring modifications to your vehicle, by all means you would be far better off safe than sorry.

Just sharing my experience within the business. Of course thats one insurer, whilst the guidelines and regulation remain the same, these are open to different interpretation.

I also accept that anybody who can afford to do 5k of mods to their car and not want to insure them is a nutter and shouldnt be allowed a license.

There was also a guy on the 8p forum who wanted to insure his brand new S3 on his dads policy, again if you can afford the car why cant you insure it.
 
To those that don't declare remaps:

When taking out insurance they always ask "Has the car been modified in any way". So if you say no, you're giving false information and won't be insured if they find out. I agree they may not find out, but why risk it for the sake of a few extra quid a month insurance?

Direct Line charge me about £80 extra per year for my remap. That's less than a tenner a month.

As I said in my reply to this thread in 2005, I have been involved in a very serious accident (not at fault) and the police did a very thorough investigation into my car.

I'd be interested to know what Ed "350" has been quoted for his car?
 
monkey trousers- direct line dont like modifications unless your over 25 i think so if you dont mind me asking how old are you!?
and what is your insurance premium
 
campbell said:
monkey trousers- direct line dont like modifications unless your over 25 i think so if you dont mind me asking how old are you!?
and what is your insurance premium
Click to expand...

I'm 35. The premium is roughly £450 fully comp.
 
monkeytrousers said:
I'm 35. The premium is roughly £450 fully comp.
Click to expand...


Just because you declare it doesn't mean it has to be expensive ;)


I pay about £650 all declared and mods replaced like-for-like in the event of an accident.
 
simch said:
Maps are detectable. Relatively easily using Vag com even, even when they are switched back.
Just on the flash reader whihc will increase each time its switched on and off.
Click to expand...

Flash reader, as a feature of VAG-COM? Where is that?
 
Well I have worked for 2 insurance companys and from my experiance I can tell you that your ECU would not be read in the case of a normal insurance claim, even if the car is a total loss.

However if any Fatality's are involved everything would get checked, also in the case of a Fatality the police would have an investagator check the car over fully including checking for any possible performance enhancing modifacations, then after any prosicutions are brought the findings would be passed on to the insurance company/companys involved.

Also if you were to have an accident and a fatality was involved you could always say you never knew the car was re-mapped/chipped. You run the risk tho because I dont know if an investagator could tell when/what date the car would have been re-mapped/chipped, this is because I have never worked on a fatality claim where a car has been found to be re-mapped/chipped.

My car has been mapped and I have not declared it but I understand the consequences if I were to be caught, but its a risk I am willing to take.
 
i have a good point, REVO remaps are switcable so for instance if u sold a revo'd S3 but put it back in standard mode and not told the new owner. The new owner had an accident in it for arguements sake, the revo remap is still on, and then insurer said the car was remapped and voided the claim? This is one reason why i think companies will not check if the car has a remap or not for normal claims. But in fatalities, were it goes to court, i think they will investigate every little avenue....
 
Insurance do rip you off. However, its a requirement, and if I was put in the situation where I had crashed and hadnt told the insurance people, i would be stressing to see if they would eventually found out! Specialist insurers are usually really good with these kind of mods. I only had to pay an extra £45 for suspension, ARBS, Milltek S/S exhaust and custom remap pusing around 260ish.
 
s1lfh

dude were you from in cambirgde didnt know there was anyone from around me on here?
 
Hey all

Just thought id add my exsperiance, i had a seat leon cupra, it had 18inch rs4 alloys, and had a modded engine, airfilter, recirc valve(all done by previous owner apart from the alloys)

The car was wrote off by someone else driving into the side of it whilst in my works car park.

The insurance had my car for 2 weeks before making me an offer of £1800 i said no flat out, the guy said if i could prove its had work done on it then he would get the price bumped up, so out came the reciepts, £150 for 2 new tyres was one of the reciepts, a cambelt and water pump, this done the trick, i got £2000 in the end, not bad considering i bought the car for £1450 and £200 for alloys :)

So adding mods and not declairing is luck of the draw, i added a reciept for tyres for alloys that didnt come as standard, but they paid out and gave me more money?lol

Also the lady that hit my car was insured by the same broker as me, so the insurer took the full brunt.
 
camscockle20vT said:
Hey all

Just thought id add my exsperiance, i had a seat leon cupra, it had 18inch rs4 alloys, and had a modded engine, airfilter, recirc valve(all done by previous owner apart from the alloys)

The car was wrote off by someone else driving into the side of it whilst in my works car park.

The insurance had my car for 2 weeks before making me an offer of £1800 i said no flat out, the guy said if i could prove its had work done on it then he would get the price bumped up, so out came the reciepts, £150 for 2 new tyres was one of the reciepts, a cambelt and water pump, this done the trick, i got £2000 in the end, not bad considering i bought the car for £1450 and £200 for alloys :)

So adding mods and not declairing is luck of the draw, i added a reciept for tyres for alloys that didnt come as standard, but they paid out and gave me more money?lol

Also the lady that hit my car was insured by the same broker as me, so the insurer took the full brunt.
Click to expand...

It's easier to get away with for non-fault claims. It is when you have a fault claim you are going to get caught out.
 
map or not, for insurance to be invalid after an accident would mean them having to decide whether the accident was down to the map, killing a child whilst doing 30 mph cannot be blammed on a map, neither can crashing a car at 75mph on the motorway

insurers are more interested in checking that the car was NOT in a road worthy state before the accident, as this will be sufficient enough in court to blame a bald tyre for the accident


it is so much easier to blame brake disks, pads, tyres, suspension for an accident than a map !!!
 
skyinsurance said:
It's easier to get away with for non-fault claims. It is when you have a fault claim you are going to get caught out.
Click to expand...

Yeh i did guess that but due to us both being with the same insurer i thought they may try and find something to default on.
 
colicabcadam said:
map or not, for insurance to be invalid after an accident would mean them having to decide whether the accident was down to the map, killing a child whilst doing 30 mph cannot be blammed on a map, neither can crashing a car at 75mph on the motorway

insurers are more interested in checking that the car was NOT in a road worthy state before the accident, as this will be sufficient enough in court to blame a bald tyre for the accident


it is so much easier to blame brake disks, pads, tyres, suspension for an accident than a map !!!
Click to expand...

If your car is modified and the car does not have all of the modifications listed with your insurer when they require it, then they can deem your policy as invalid as it could have been a risk they may have not covered in the first place....

Certain insurers would not even cover cars with x amount of mods on and therefore they could potentially backdate your policy to inception and give you a full refund and deem the policy as void if you were to have a fault accident and claim. As said above though it is a lot easier to 'get away' with it when you are in a non-fault accident rather than an accident caused by yourself.
 
Dad's A4 Avant was involved in a bad crash with a lorry. It had to go 50:50 due to location. His insurance company, having been superb in the past, tried to get out of paying for the damage by saying he had fitted different tyres to his car. This was with Zurich Premier clients, a company we both thought was reputable.

So in answer to the thread, damn right, every little thing is declared and I have emails or letters for written proof on EVERY single change.
 
I think you'll find the insurance company cant simply void the policy. They at worst will reduce the policy right down to a barebones "road traffic act only" cover, which provides the absolute bare minimum of cover as required by the RTA.

They ofcourse might then choose pursue a civil case against you to recover their costs incurred.
 
Holy thread revival Batman, it's a thread from the dead.
 
aragorn said:
I think you'll find the insurance company cant simply void the policy. They at worst will reduce the policy right down to a barebones "road traffic act only" cover, which provides the absolute bare minimum of cover as required by the RTA.

They ofcourse might then choose pursue a civil case against you to recover their costs incurred.
Click to expand...

They can void a policy if they wouldn't have covered the risk in the first place....trust me as I work in the insurance industry and have had to void a few policies in my time here....e.g client misinforms insurer of numerous claims, or convictions when taking out the policy, then when an accident happens the insurer looks more closely into the client and subsequently they wouldn't have covered the risk from inception. We even have a Void document specifically to send to clients that have misinformed the insurance company....

In relation to this thread though regarding modifications and not telling your insurane company....the worse thing they could do in my experience when a claim happens and it is your fault is not to pay out for your vehicle....refund you the money of the policy you paid for- cover the costs of the Third Party damage and then persue you for the money they have lost through the courts...

The majority of times though- the insurance company could be 'nice' and go with the assumption that the mod's would be looked as standard cost to replace...e.g your modified wheels cost you £2000, but standard they are £1000 so will give you £250 per corner to get them fixed rather than £500.

Really don't see the point in lying to an insurance company about modifications....you pay such a large sum of money for insurance and some mod's - you may as well do it properly and insure it all correctly!
 
rhubarb4 said:
Holy thread revival Batman, it's a thread from the dead.
Click to expand...

I was reading the stickies on my lunch and was bored lol

To add to the thread tho 😃

Insurance is a joke, they have loads of clauses and fees ontop of an already exstortionate annual fee if it all goes wrong. A friend had a crash in the snow, no one else involved but like a plum he went through his insurance, they took him to the cleaners, he ended up with £1200 of his pay out of £3000.

I 'declare' everything the insurer needs to know about, not because im a selfish scrounge that has no regard for anyone else, but because bigger alloys, or an airfilter or exhaust will not cause an accident or the death of anybody, a 1ltr corsa can do 100mph and kill someone no mods just a plum behind the wheel. So why give money to kill joys, no one would do half the things on here if the told the insurer everything.
 
Because if you don't, when you need them most (when you've crashed and want money for your car/other parties' car/injuries to all involved) they'll mysteriously disappear into the shadows and you'll be left with a hefty bill, 1000X that of the insurance quote for your mods... ;)
 
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