Temporary Car Insurance

There you are, sat at the auction bidding on that beautiful motor you had your eyes on. The other bidders drop out one by one, and the final one shakes his head, the hammer falls and the car is yours! Now all you have to do is get it back home.

Of course, you already own a car and you have a car insurance policy which covers you for every vehicle that doesn't belong to you but which you are driving with the owner's permission. There is only one fly in this ointment; the car is yours, you just bought it! Now what do you do?

Well, you could take a chance on driving it, even though first of all it is an unfamiliar vehicle and secondly it isn't carrying a tax disc. Not a problem, the police don't work at this time of night anyway! How wrong can you be. A few hundred yards down the road and there is a flashing light in your rearview mirror and you're nabbed. A courteous but firm telling off, a date at court and since this is not your first offence your driving licence goes up in smoke for six months.

Okay, let's look at a different scenario. You know that the auction hall that you are going to has free Wi-Fi just like the vast majority of them so you take along your laptop. When the hammer falls you log on to this short term car insurance website, fill in a short form which takes you 5 min, enter your credit card details for a fairly small sum and, low and behold, you are legally insured to drive the car! You drive off, get pulled by the law, explain the situation. Fair enough, you would probably have to visit the police station the following day in order to present the documents which prove you are insured and which you have just downloaded and printed on your own home printer, but there is no court date and your licence remains intact. Which scenario would you prefer?

Short term car insurance is available, would you believe, for just a single day if you really need it; or you can have multiple days, right up to 28. You can select third-party or fully comprehensive cover, and even insure it for your mate as well just in case you decide to lend it to him for a couple of days!

So what do we have to thank for this miracle of convenience? Well, it is all down to the Internet and computerisation which allows an insurance company to not only calculate a premium for you but also to issue a policy automatically, so cutting down tremendously on costs. Back in the early days of car insurance a huge dollop of the premium was always taken up in brokers fees, which made short term car insurance completely uneconomic but we are now in the 21st century, when buyers expect more from their providers! Needless to say the major insurers are not at all happy about this situation, since they would obviously prefer to sell you a 12 month policy, but there is no reason why they should continue to love their own way is there.