All of the environmental advantages of taking the bus to work are negated by two things:

First, hundreds of freeloading pensioners, who 'need' to get their shopping at rush hour, taking all of the seats.

Second, drivers like these:

If you are seriously, awfully bad at parking you'd better watch out, because Crap-Parking.co.uk has its beady eyes on you.

If you're a selfish idiot and think you can park where you like and balls to everyone else, then this site is here to expose you. Anyone can park the car a little bit badly, and I expect we've all parked a bit further from the kerb than we'd have liked, or strayed an inch into the next space and said to ourselves "That'll do."

These selfish muppets, on the other hand have absolutely zero consideration, and presumably a matching amount of shame, as they brazenly park their cars like this:







So next time you see someone parking in a seriously dumb way, why not take a photo with your mobile and send it in, so at least they can be mercilessly mocked.

And how about this:



This not-so-smart parking warden's Smart car is equipped with a retractable, 15 foot high spy camera, ready to take pictures of parking offences in the NCP car park. Unfortunately, the dumb driver forgot to retract the camera when he left the car park, caught it on the barrier, and before you could say cheese, he was the one caught on camera...

By the way, this post is the 200th post on the Fluxposure blog. I hope everyone is still enjoying it. Your comments are always welcome, and I'm certainly looking forward to writing the next couple of hundred - if you can bear it.

I recently got sent an interesting piece about some 'new' tyres Michelin have produced - they call it a Tweel.



The blurb is reproduced below, but the interesting thing is that these tyres have already been covered in our Influx car magazine and on this blog - over two years ago!

"These tires are airless and are scheduled to be out on the market very soon.The bad news for law enforcement is that spike strips (aka stingers) will not work on these tires.
This is what great R&D will do, and just think of the impact on existing technology:
A. no more air v r compressors at gas stations...
C. no more repair kits...
D. no more flats..."

OK, what happened to B???

Of course, any adrianflux customers who read our original piece on the Tweel in issue 1 of influx, may already know that the big problem is excessive road noise over 50 mph and the wheel is not expected to be in production until at least 2015.

But how did we know? Well, some of the Flux Babes have a very close relationship with the Michelin man:

Once again, June is our month of fun here at Flux HQ, and one of the competitions this year was to come up with an Adrian Flux company theme tune.

Here is Richard Rowsell's winning entry.

Undercover police in Miami had the easiest bust in their lives when they were offered a ride in a heavily modified stretch limousine bus cruising through South Beach. Their $40 'fare' got them on board a mobile brothel, where another sort of ride cost somewhat more.

Click here to see the video news report.

So if anyone's interested in acquiring a modified stretch bus, the Florida police have one available at a knock down rate, and if you need to insure it, make sure get a specialist modified car insurance quote.

According to the Yorkshire Police, thieves in Leeds have been nicking car stereos from Ford Foci (or Focuses if you prefer) under the mistaken impression that they contain a magical chip, which, if soldered into your Sky Digibox will allow you to watch the movies and football for free.

Now, I know people in Leeds must be desperate to watch a real football team again, but this is so obviously a load of rubbish that you have to wonder who is falling for it.

Reminds me of the spate of drain cover thefts we had here a couple of years ago, following an untrue rumour that the scrap metal price had gone through the roof.

Still even that is more believable than this recent magazine article which is dodgier than the coffee I had at the French Car Show yesterday morning.

The results are in in the Auto Express Driver Power insurance survey for 2008 and we were pleased to finish in a creditable 11th place in the survey, showing last year's rise from 40th to 17th wasn't just a flash in the pan.

With this result being the outcome of actual customers responses, we're especially happy that our customers seem to have a good opinion of us, a testament to all the hard work which has been done in improving the customer experience over the last few years, even though we certainly think there's room for further improvement.

I think the results are even better for the fact that, as a broker, a certain amount of the customer experience is out of our hands and relies on our panel of insurance providers. Particularly so when you consider that the unusual and specialist cars we often cover are much harder for the insurance companies to deal with, especially if there is a claim.

Because of that, I think the value of dealing through a decent broker is demonstrated when you see that some of the companies on our panel are languishing in the bottom 10 of the rankings - so it seems that you really can get demonstrably better value AND better service by going through a broker, despite what Direct Line would have you believe.

Of course, the broker you choose has a big impact - otherwise Endsleigh, Budget, the AA, Swinton and the Post Office wouldn't be in the bottom ten.

And now, a la Jeremy Clarkson, I'll explain why we actually did even better. The top four companies are all, in a way, cheating. I don't mean that they aren't doing really well for their customers, because they are. It's just that if you aren't an elderly trade union member living in the country, you won't be able to get a quote with all four. SAGA and RIAS concentrate on the 'mature' markets, Frizzell targets only union (and similar organisation) members, and the winner, NFU, will only quote drivers with a rural postcode.

Obviously that's fair enough, but it does give these companies an easier ride in the survey stakes, because they can tailor their products and their customer experience to their very specific niche. In our case, managing the conflicting expectations of classic car owners, high net worth individuals and modified jap import enthusiasts, for example, is much more of a challenge. Our staff have to learn about hundreds of products, and then have to deal with customers who are so dramatically diverse that they need treating in quite different ways. And it even comes down to things like the hold music - which everyone complains about, but for different and often opposite reasons.

So, all in all, an impressive showing, and for anyone who might have been disappointed by our service in the past: we've got much better - it's official, and we're aiming to improve even further, so perhaps it's time to consider giving us another go.

Norwich Union sorry, Aviva* have announced that they are pulling the plug on their Pay As You Drive Car Insurance product, after disappointing sales and low take up of their tracking technology.

The idea behind PAYD is that you install some GPS telemetry gubbins in your car, so that Norwich Union can track where you go, when you go and how you get there, and in return they charge you a variable rate per hour of between 5p a mile and £1 a mile, depending on whether you're on a leisurely drive through the Cotswolds at noon or caning it through Brixton at midnight.

The problems with this are manifold. Do you really want your insurer to know how fast you are driving on every occasion, where you go to regularly? Privacy is a major concern for many people with any kind of pay as you drive mechanism, and who is to say what NU would use the info for, or even if they'll sell it to the highest bidder?

Even Norwich Union's own marketing spiel could only come out with a statistic as underwhelming as this :

"24% of "Pay As You Drive"™ Pilot customers would have saved up to 30% compared to a standard Norwich Union Motor Insurance premium"

I'm not sure if that means that 76% were worse off, or no better off for choosing PAYD, but in any case you would expect bigger savings than this from the hot air they spouted when they launched the product.

In any case, ans as we previously pointed out, a limited mileage policy is a better, lower tech solution for most young drivers, and offers the added advantage of a set monthly bill, so no sudden stings or big fluctuations when you have to travel more than in an average month (like many students travelling long distances a couple of times per term.) What's more, in many cases the savings with a limited mileage policy can be quite substantial, and you don't have to worry about fitting an ugly black box to your pride and joy. (Hmm. I wonder if you have to declare a telematics unit as a modification.)

Despite Aviva's attempt to spin this failure as a result of fears of a surveillance society, I think the real problem is that the product was quite gimmicky and did not in fact offer drivers an attractive way of using their cars, and so it was doomed to failure.

The 10,000 policyholders are now being substituted onto other policies, which means in a week or two we will be seeing uproar on the forums as someone gets stung for a massive premium increase. Oh dear.

*(incidentally, we told you that piece of news aaaages ago - before they did, in fact)

Since the Fast Car photoshoot at the office a couple of weeks ago, I've spent every spare moment (I don't get that many, which is why it has taken 2 weeks) looking at the hours of footage we took on the day and editing it down into something you might actually want to watch - here it is:

Last Friday we had an interesting day at the office as FastCar descended on East Winch Hall to take some photos of the Fluxbabes. Scary and Trev from the mag, along with photographer Dan and make-up artist Holly Newberry - yes, that Holly Newberry (!WARNING! Links Are Not Safe For Work!).

Babes, Charlie, Jemma, Laura, Sam and FluXFactor winner Gemma were chosen to represent the Flux Babes for this shoot, and all did really well in front of the cameras.



We shot a behind the scenes video, which we are editing at the moment, and will post that on the Flux Babes site, along with photos from the day.



Meanwhile, look out for the Flux Babes on your newsagents shelves in the next couple of months, and don't forget, you can see loads of them at the French Car Show on the 22nd of June.

If you thought the wall to wall car insurance adverts on daytime tv, were bad, wait till you see what our American cousins have to watch in their commercial breaks. This advert is worse - much worse - than anything Admiral, Confused, Elephant or even Hastings Direct have ever put out.

Having said that, for all that it is really, really bad, it is still, somehow, less annoying than Harry Hastings, the Admiral and their drama school reject chums who clutter up the British airwaves.



Weirdly, their website looks completely nondescript and corporate!

With only 38 days left until the Adrian Flux French Car Show 2008, at Rockingham on June 22nd, we're working flat out to help make sure that this year's show is the best yet.

For us that means taking an unprecedented number of Flux Babes, getting an even bigger and better Scalextric circuit, and sorting out free popcorn and candy floss, plus loads more besides.


Can't wait for the next one...

Insurance comparison sites are springing up at a rapid rate, as new entrants emerge onto the market every day to give confused.com, moneysupermarket and gocompare a run for their money.

But how valuable are comparison sites?

I've previously looked at sources of bias, and lack of market coverage, but this week the FSA came back with their assessment of the state of the market, and in particular how it affects customers.

It's the specific examples of bad (and good) practice that are interesting, as the problems will resonate with anyone who has spent much time on the different aggregator sites.

Here are some of their findings of bad practice by car insurance comparison sites:

Some sites have...

"Notification that assumptions have been used to generate quotes, but no indication of what those assumptions are."

Helpful if you click through only to find out you are not eligible for that particular quote because of that SP30 you picked up 2 years ago.

"Using price as the sole basis for "comparison", but not advising consumers that they should consider other factors, and that the difference in price is likely to reflect the different levels of protection offered by the policies."

This is pretty major. Anyone can put a policy together that's cheap, as long as they leave out most of the features that normal people might actually want. Even Swiftcover, who compete as aggresively on price as anyone, know that, as demonstrated by their own news release on unwitting assumptions made by drivers on levels of cover.

"Not listing all benefits provided by the policy, and not providing information on the basis for listing the benefits nor advising consumers that policies may have other benefits not listed."

Not listing all the benefits makes it very hard to do a truly fair comparison without ringing the insurance companies concerned, which would kind of defeat the point of the aggregator site. Imagine if you had two quotes around £10 difference in price. What the FSA are saying here is that the second place quote could have free breakdown, legal and accident cover, but you would never even know.

"Not making it clear that the policies listed did not all contain the provisions or benefits specifically requested by the consumer."

Can you believe this. You've asked the comparison site specifically for quotes with protected no claims bonus, and then the site ignores you and returns policies with and without the feature you'd asked for. And this actually happens. It's easy to see some very tricky situations developing here in the event of a claim.

"Providing a figure for the "total excess", when in fact this is only the voluntary excess and a further compulsory excess will need to be applied. In one case, a further compulsory excess of £320 was applicable. The compulsory excess figures quoted on the site were provided as the actual level of excess to be applied, but were shown to be incorrect when compared to the broker's or insurer's website. In one case a figure of £100 was given for the compulsory excess, but in fact the actual compulsory excess applicable was £475."

Ouch! This may just be poor programming, but it comes across as dishonest. By the time you would find out about this you are probably well into the 'winning' quote's site, and would probably be dubious about checking the other results in case the same happened again.

"The quote given on the comparison site differs from the quote given on the brokers or insurers website, but no information has been changed and no additional questions asked to warrant a change in price."

This is the one that most people notice, and possibly stems from a different set of assumptions (but why?). Again it comes across as being something like a con if the price has 'revised' upwards.

"The information provided by the consumer to the comparison site is incorrectly passed to the broker or insurer."

The whole point of comparison sites is that 'You only have to enter your information once' so this just seems shoddy.

"Figures given for the cost of optional extras are incorrect. In the majority of cases seen where the cost was incorrect, the comparison site underestimated the cost of the optional extras."

Why? Are they just guessing, or do they not think anyone cares about the price of car insurance optional extras?

"The quote given by the comparison site excludes certain features (for example legal assistance and breakdown cover), but these features are then automatically added to the final quote price when proceeding through to payment on the broker's or insurer's website."

I think we have to let the comparison sites off this one, to be fair. The fault here is the broker or insurer applying the old thetrainline.com tactic of whacking on all the optional extras by default, which is annoying, but hardly the aggregator's fault.

So what can you do about this?

Well as the FSA have decided, in their wisdom, not to 'name and shame' the aggregator sites which are getting away with these poor quality features, it's down to you as the customer to keep an eye out and beware of misleading information. Saying that, it is true that insurance comparison sites perform an important service, and help you narrow down some of the thousands of options and get a ballpark figure for your quote. Saying that, I would also recommend that everybody should ring a couple of direct insurers, and at least one specialist insurance broker (like us for example - if you need a quote, call us on 08000 83 88 33).

There are many companies that still don't appear on comparison websites, despite the misleading claims (according to the FSA) of almost total market coverage by some of the aggregators.

What's more, specialist brokers may well have a specialist scheme that fits your situation, and here at Adrian Flux we have over 200 such schemes with 40+ insurers on our panel, so you may well be special without realising it, and that could save you lots of money. The third reason you should consider a broker, is that the broker can take many more factors into account than any comparison site, and more importantly, we only need to ask the questions that are relevant to your situation. Some of this can only be done over the phone, when we can talk to you direct and treat you as an individual.

In any case, if the FSA is to be believed, you need to be careful before accepting comparison sites at face value.

According to the esteemed Asia Insurance Review, researchers at Queensland University in Australia have found that :

A woman who is chided or criticised by her husband or male companion while she is driving is more than twice as likely to have an accident.

Apparently, 168 female students underwent a computer simulated psychological driving test. Half of the group were informed that the test would find out why men were better drivers then women, the other half were simply told the researchers were exploring the mental processes in driving.

Almost half the former group struck a (computerised) pedestrian who appeared suddenly, but only a quarter of the second group did.

The result of this - if women are bad drivers, it's probably a bloke's fault, hence womens' car insurance is cheaper.

Yep, that must have been what happened here. After a quality attempt at parking, this lady is attempting to reverse out for another go.

You may remember that we sponsor Sarah Bennett-Baggs, who last year drove a BMW in the Britcar series.

Well this year she's driving in the Porsche Club Championship, in a 1978 Porsche 911 SC. The first race was Easter Monday at Donington Park, and congratulations are due to Sarah, who finished her first two races with a class win and a third in class finishes. A great achievement - and Sarah is the first woman to win in the history of the Porsche Club Championship.

Sarah has really pushed the boat out this season - as you can see, she's had an outfit made to co-ordinate with the Flux Babes,



And has even decorated the side of her bright pink Porsche with the URL of this blog.



What's more Sarah is convinced she can improve in races to come, saying "I am really looking forward to the rest of the season as I am still getting used to racing 30 year old technology!"

Best of luck Sarah. She'll be at Oulton Park this weekend, and starts as class leader, so I'm sure she'd appreciate any support if you're in the area.

Earlier this week we relaunched Influx.co.uk - the online, more for your eyes, digital version of our twice-yearly magazine publication. Both myself and David exulted a considerable amount of effort into the new-look, feature-packed website to compliment Issue 5, which was sent out to our readers last week.

The website's bursting with plenty of pictures, videos and extended articles that we simply couldn't fit in the magazine! Like this one - a homemade supercar in the making! Why not read the article about the Farbio GTS?


And what's more, if you've just joined us or missed the first few issues, you can catch up online by reading our digital editions!

Once again on our customer service department we felt the need to challenge the creative juices of the staff and give them a little fun and games over the Easter period. And as usual, they didn't disappoint with their weird and wonderful creations!


So.... off they went over the weekend with their challenge..... design an egg. There were no rules or regulations, all we wanted was some eggs - blown, paper mached, chcocloate - anything at all. Of course as ever on the service floor Bruce reared his horned head... and the creator of his egg took home the overall prize. So if you ever speak to Megan on the phone you can tell her how impressed you are with her creative skills (see below)!

If you've yet to experience the legend that is Bruce, and are a fan of facebook, I'm sure he'd be pleased to make your accquaintance (under Bruce Thebull)
Here are some other inspired entries.

Happy Easter!

I'm now off to eat them all..........

Clearly Brunstrom's crew at the North Wales police have decided that if you can't beat them, you may as well join them, and have kitted out a police van with thousands of pounds worth of plod mods.

They reckon if they turn up at cruise events in their modified Ford Transit (resplendent in classic Martini race colours and recently retired from camera duty) they can talk to the participants about road safety. Presumably once the laughter has died down.

Predictably, many people are mocking the police for this, but I think they deserve some credit.

OK, so it's about as cool as your dad coming out clubbing with you, but at least they're making an effort to engage with a culture that most police forces don't even try to understand, much less care about.

The bottom line is, that if a single life is saved, the effort will have been worth it, and by running a modified motor themselves, they might even learn a thing or two.



If any plumbers out there feel inspired enough to kit out their transit van, you know where to come for modified van insurance.

According to an Australian study male drivers are more easily distracted than women whilst driving, and their attention wanders from the road when they change CDs, or read maps. Billboards are also a problem.

Even so the chap in this clip must have a very complicated CD system to have missed the red lights so spectacularly. Either that or the Eva Herzigova Wonderbra ad has made a comeback.

That was the headline in the Guardian on Saturday, where Direct Line were lambasted for charging some fellow a much higher rate for his insurance renewal than they were quoting if he had been a new customer.

On the face of it, it looks quite bad by Direct Line. They quoted him a price of £551 when a new customer would have been offered £173. There's no getting away from the fact that Mr Robert King, 55, is paying too much for his home insurance.

But looking more closely at the story, I can't help but feel that Mr King is at least partly responsible for his own misfortune here. He's been with the company for 10 years and in all that time has never compared his home insurance renewal quotes until now. Says he, "I know the advice is to shop around for the best quote," and so he should, being an accountant.

Funnily enough, on the way in this morning I saw a large billboard from Direct Line promising their renewal premiums for car insurance would not rise in year two. There is a rather vague disclaimer stating that ANY change to your details or your policy will invalidate the guarantee. So 3 speeding points, and a claim (both specifically mentioned) but remember that your guarantee is also worthless if you change cars, jobs, annual mileage, named drivers, postcode - anything really - and it doesn't matter if the risk goes up or down. I wonder what the percentage of drivers is where no details at all change year on year.

At least they've got happy customers supporting them all the way and making supportive videos. Oh, no wait a minute...

Apparently, Mr Daz feels a bit aggrieved with the way Direct Line have treated him.

It looks like Norwich Union's days are numbered.

Parent company Aviva have decided that in the interest of maintaining the same brand across the world, the Norwich Union brand has to go. They had previously said they would retain it.

Cue a massive marketing spend on the rebrand, and higher premiums to pay for it, no doubt. I can't imagine the reasoning behind replacing a brand as strong as Norwich Union, which is almost synonymous with insurance with an unknown quantity like Aviva. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Norwich Union's parent company, Aviva, may be about to pull out of its Indian call centre operations, according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph.

Whether this marks the end of home insurance claims staff with no idea what an immersion heater is, or if Aviva are finally getting the message that UK customers don't like being put through to Chennai whenever they have a question that needs answering.



Looking back on my post a little over a year ago, its fascinating how things have changed. Back then Norwich Union were sending another 1,000 jobs out to the subcontinent. Now they're bringing them back.

And I mentioned that we had 300 employees - we're well past 400 now and another new crop are starting this week. All based in the UK, of course, and if you do have trouble understanding them, all you need to do is larn yarself Norfolk, bor.

Kwik-Fit Insurance have picked up a penalty from Google, probably for using the same blog spamming techniques that got GoCompare banned from the search engine.

A search for "kwik fit insurance" currently brings up only the web page of the tyres and parts business, wheras the car insurance site has plummeted 50-odd places. Whilst this probably won't have had the same devastating impact as on GoCompare, they will certainly be feeling the effects of the missing traffic.

Paying for an advertising link is one thing, but would Kwik Fit be paying for links from sites ostensibly about Crime Scenes or web hosting if any benefit other than a link for the links sake were in their mind. It's great news for everyone who can't afford to subvert the structure of the internet in this way, as a sign that Google is making good on its claim to put quality sites to the fore and penalise spammers.

I was glad we were able to help a young client with a problem. Insurance for young drivers is difficult to find at the best of times, but if you are a nineteen year old young driver, a bloke, live in London, and you need to insure a vehicle that is not only electrically powered, but is also q-plated and a milk float, there are very few insurers willing to offer cover.

Thankfully, because we have such a large panel of insurers, our commercial vehicles insurance department was able to help out a young man in exactly that situation, who had been looking, without any luck, for someone who could cover his 1987 milk float. And whilst the rate was never going to be particularly cheap, it was a good price for the situation, and he's now got the coolest ride in London.

Here's his blog and Flickr.

And if you need milk float insurance, give us a call on 08000 83 88 33.