Admiral Charges Hotmail Users More For Car Insurance (thetimes.co.uk)

One of Britain's biggest car insurers has admitted increasing premiums for drivers who apply using a Hotmail account. From a report: Motorists seeking cover from Admiral could be charged $45 extra if they use certain email addresses. The insurer said some domain names were "associated with more accidents" than others, raising applicants' risk profile. Figures from the Association of British Insurers to be published today show that the cost of car insurance has increased by more than a quarter over the past three years. Admiral said that hundreds of factors were used by underwriters in setting car insurance, with riskier motorists paying more. Issues included the age of a driver and their postcode.

Comments

WTF!?

[DaMattster]

The insurance industry is just crazy! Plum fucking loco.

Re:WTF!?

[AmiMoJo]

What other metrics could the browser measure to determine your risk as a drive?

- Running Windows XP
- Browsing with IE6
- Referrer header is xhamster.com
- Mouse cursor judders around due to shaky hands
- Enters name and address in all lower/uppercase

Re:WTF!?

[beelsebob]

Apparently the issue is mostly that modern cars have really fancy bumpers. A bumper that includes a bunch of camera equipment, and range sensors, and all kinds of other fancy gadgetry costs a lot. That means that fender benders cost a lot to repair now, when they used to be trivially cheap. It also means that fender benders tend to get reported to the insurer now, when they used to just be ignored.

Re:WTF!?

[cayenne8]

A minor scrape to a bumper while parking is cause for police reports and waiting around, whereas in the US a note with contact/insurance info under the wiper (or just a pile of cash obscured by a note) is the standard response.

Hmm...I guess the last few times I came out in the parking lot, to see one side or the other of my caved in by someone pulling out and hitting me, that the note just must have blown off the windshield...

Man, these days, I wonder if drivers are getting their licenses out of a box of Cracker Jacks or something....NO ONE can seem to drive these days. And the worst offenders, seem to be the ones driving the largest trucks and SUVs.

I drive a small 2 seater sports car. And each time I've come out to see the side of my car caved in (one time side view mirror also ripped off)...it was from parking next to a large truck.

Ok, maybe they weren't paying enough attention and didn't see my car, but surely they felt the impact while they turned out of the parking space and were scraping the full length of my car...??

These folks have NO fscking clue where they are in space with relation to their truck/car.

These days, I see it VERY often with pulling up to the line at a stop light.

Rather than pull all the way up to line, more and more of these Bozos are at least almost one car length away from the line.....like they stop when they see the nose of their large truck at the line, which is NOT near the line.

Even if they see me pulled way ahead of them to the line, they don't move.

In New Orleans, where we have neutral grounds (medians as others call them) on almost all roads...if making a left turn, you have a limited number of cars that can fit....and these assholes are keeping at least 1-2 cars from being able to wait for the lights to change and complete the left turn.

Its like no one taught them how to drive and judge where you car is in space.....

I won't even get into who none can seem (especially LARGE trucks/SUVs) to fscking PARK in between the lines, nor do they realize the swinging the door open full force when getting out, *might* just cause it to hit the car parked beside it....

[/rant mode off...going to get a cool drink]

if they have more accidents then that's fair

[iamhassi]

At first glance I feel like this is horrible and unfair, but if they ran the numbers and for some reason hotmail users have more accidents then it's only fair they charge more for hotmail users.

AOL

[Rick Schumann]

Hate to think how much more they'd charge someone with an AOL email address, then.