Does Comprehensive Car Insurance Cover Your Windscreen?
Is your car insurance policy truly comprehensive?
Whilst it can be easy to be lulled into a false sense of security by assuming that any “fully comprehensive” insurance policy will cover most major circumstances where a car owner may be expected to pay out, this is never truly the case and most “fully comp schemes" are far from comprehensive.
For example, any plan that describes itself as “fully comp” and does not include windscreen insurance is not actually comprehensive to the point of being almost misleading in its use of the term.
Why is this the case and why does this matter? Read below for more information.
Never Truly Full
In some respects, it is generally self-evident that “fully comp” isn’t entirely full, in the same way that most people know The Neverending Story is not truly eternal.
Comprehensive policies do not tend to cover general use, damage or theft caused by carelessness or damage caused by the car being used illegally, such as drink driving, driving with a banned or invalid licence or someone driving your car without their own insurance.
However, there are differences between comprehensive insurance policies when it comes to common issues such as breakdowns, wrong-fuelling, transport and courtesy car provision and cover, protecting “no-claims” discounts or even legal liability protection.
By far the most controversial potential omission, and one that every driver with fully comp insurance should check as soon as they can is cover for their windscreen.
The number of policies that do not provide any windscreen cover at all has tripled over the past four years, and even of the ones that do, half of them will not cover the complete cost of a windscreen replacement.
Even worse than this, roughly half of all policies apply a “market value” calculation to their windscreens that recommend older cars are simply written off if the cost of a high-tech windscreen is more than the value of the car itself.
Whilst a windscreen is legally required to be clean and clear from obstructions such as chips and cracks, they do not receive the same level of comprehensive cover other parts do.
This comes down to cost; as windscreens become more sophisticated and feature-filled, including heating systems to avoid the build-up of ice, heads-up displays, and a wide range of advanced driver assistance systems controlled through windscreen sensors, they have increased in cost.
Having insurance that covers your windscreen is absolutely vital to avoid potentially thousands of pounds of unexpected expenses, and one of the first questions any driver should ask if they are in the market for fully comp insurance is whether this includes windscreen cover.
As well as this, be aware that there might be a cover limit for claims that a high-tech windscreen could exceed. Windscreens for some cars can cost more than £2,500 to replace. As well as this, check directly about windscreen recalibration if it is not explicitly stated in the policy.
Check as well to see which repairers are approved by your provider when it comes to cover limits and excesses. In general, check what the excess would be for a replacement as well to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Finally, claim early to avoid issues. Insurers will be far happier to pay for the costs of repairing chips in a windscreen than replacing one outright if you let it become a crack.