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-   -   Booked Creta, dealer insists on taking insurance due to wider coverage (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-loans-insurance/252977-booked-creta-dealer-insists-taking-insurance-due-wider-coverage.html)

Hello Folks,

Buying a car after 8 years, hence out of touch with the current state of affairs. When I bought in 2014, things like PDI, and getting insurance outside was not very popular or I was not aware enough.

Things are different now.

I booked a CRETA SX (O) IVT Petrol, a Hyundai dealer in Bangalore.

Insurance that which Dealer is offering comes to Rs 78k, including B2B, EP, RTI and apparently covers things like rat-bites, cashless across India, No. of claims, etc

PFA, complete benefits if I take insurance from Hyundai.

The dealer is insisting on taking Insurance and may not be able to offer the Car without insurance.

I am kind of exhausted with this car buying process, which started in Sep'21....multiple TDs, multiple bookings and cancellations, a lot of negotiations, etc

I don't want to be short-changed and at the same time, don't have hours to spend any more on haggling/negotiations.

If you were in my place, what would you do?

It is not due to wider coverage but due to his big fat commission. You can either

a. Get a formal quote with your preferred insurance with add on covers as needed by you and ask the dealer to match or settle within 5 to 10% of it to maintain the relationship.

b. Switch to another dealer but end result is very likely the same as Creta is a hot selling car.

c. Escalate to Hyundai and fight it out as no one can compel to buy you insurance.

d. I read about 'Click to Buy' from Hyundai in this forum itself. Delivery will still be through dealer but booking and payment is online and directly deals with Hyundai. During this process, you can do the opt out of insurance (do it on your own) and transfer only RTO charges for registration. Search the thread and get the details.

In an ideal world, I'd tell you to cross-shop with other dealers, haggle, put your foot down, complain to Hyundai and get your way. But the current situation is far from ideal. It's an absolute seller's market and the car you are buying has a wait period running into months!

Try to haggle a little bit on the price. If he agrees, good. If he doesn't, just go ahead and get it from him for a smoother, quicker experience.

Time is money. I have frequently paid 5% over the market-value for my pre-worshipped cars if I really loved them. The last time I bought a pre-owned German, I paid the asking price because I didn't want to lose the car (had already lost 2 other deals) and it was reasonably priced.

If I really like something, I'll pay extra for it. You know my answer. Again, time is money and you have clearly had enough of the car buying process, so close it.

Bargain with your boots on for insurance and I am sure that you'd get lower rates 2 or 3K above what other insurance agencies offer.

This has been the case with other manufacturers for me.

The higher Insurance Premium is what is offered as mild discounts for accessories or body detailing and loan interest pay outs.

78k for insurance is quite high. We paid ~55k which includes zero dep, consumables, engine cover and RTI covers.

But if you need your car early, I say go for it. Some of the benefits do make sense as well. 20k "premium" in today's crazy seller's market isn't that bad. Ofcourse it's far from ideal but so is the current situation. Getting your choice of engine/gearbox/colour is a task in itself.

Good luck!

Yep, it's indeed a golden age for Car Sellers.

Before it was unthinkable to get a car at the price quoted, exchange bonus, discounts, this and that, but now the tables have totally flipped.

Hopefully, NCB should reduce some burden.

Thanks everyone.

We bought a Creta recently and I insisted that I will get the insurance myself (a friend of mine is a very good agent and has been insuring all my relatives' and friends' cars, including my family's) and they tried to act funny. I put my foot down and they had to relent in the end.

78K sounds really high for a Creta. We purchased a Compass limited in March and paid 55K via ICICI for the complete insurance cover including RTI, Nill Dip etc etc etc... the dealer wanted almost 90K for it but after I told him that i was going to get it from outside he came down to about 65K but I got the outside insurance.
Bargain for the rate and dont waste money on the dealer, he is making a lot of money off the sale in any case.

I would say negotiate and stay firm on getting outside insurance (Or let them match your outside quote). A lot of the times, these dealers have another firm of their own which offers other company insurance, in that case, they offer you the same outside insurance but they get to earn that Commission.

Ask them, I don't want the Hyundai insurance, you get it done but from some other company at lower price.

78k is really high for Creta, around 20k extra I would say. 78k seems reasonable for a car upwards of 30 lakhs - may be a Tuscon or a Meridian or C5 Aircross.
You can continue to negotiate or trying raising it to Hyundai, but unfortunately, it's a seller's market these days.

You should go to the websites of insurance partners depicted in that sales brochure and get a quote for the same benefits that dealer is offering.. Take that and then deal with the dealership, you will have an upper hand in negotiations as they cannot say that they cannot honor that insurance/quote or other marketing gimmick..

But yes, if you are in dire need of the car and cannot wait any longer, you can maybe go for it as cancelling the booking and going to anther dealer may not be worth the time..

I was in the same situation last year. Dealer was forcing me to take their insurance but I didn't budge. They are the only Hyundai dealer in my nearest proximity and they own other two dealerships in nearby towns. So its kind of monopoly here. I also contacted three different dealers in Chennai over phone and all of them were okay with taking insurance on my own. Either I can take their insurance and avail cash discount in the range of 20-30K or zero discount if I take insurance on my own. These discussions happened in October last year.

Coming to my purchase, I decided to go with the dealer in my town and told them I will book the car only if they allow me to take insurance on my own. They didn't accept initially but it was a Friday evening and i believe mine was the only booking for that day and they accepted my conditions. Variant - Creta SX(O) D MT. Though they said car will be delivered by Dec'21, it was delivered on Apr'22 after an escalation to Hyundai. I would say Hyundai was very prompt in my case and i got immediate responses and the issue got escalated very soon.

I know the only reason for delay is due to this insurance issue but i was also waiting till Feb'22 to experience Skoda Slavia before making a final decision. But to my disappointment Slavia also has space issues in rear seats which I thought Skoda will be rectifying after getting similar feedback for Kushaq. So I started following up with the Hyundai dealer from then and waited till first week of April. When I didn't get any confirmation for vehicle allocation, I called up Hyundai customer care and vehicle got allocated in a week.

I would request you to take your case with Hyundai support team if you are still planning to go ahead with this purchase.

I wouldn't buy this car just because I don't like to be held to ransom. I have bought dealer's insurance in the past from Toyota dealers. But the dealer offered me a choice to buy outside if I want and sold me on the added benefit of paying 10-12% extra.

Think it that way that you paid extra for peace of mind. I understand that it is incorrect morally, but there is a limit to which you should fight. Based on your statement above, If you can afford it and you love the car, just go for it.

If I loved the car and keeping all other conditions same, I would have taken the quote from some other insurer / online quote to determine how much I'm going to pay more. That way, I'm intentionally paying more, let's say for peace of mind and closing the deal. The dealer is not cheating me. He is simply charging me just like a dish in a restaurant is charged differently across restaurants.

78K for Creta SX(O) is quite high. Though the OTR of Bangalore and Delhi are not comparable, but I had paid Rs. 50,874 for SX(O) IVT in September 2021 and this was through the dealer under Hyundai Assurance. This includes Zero Dep, Engine Protect, Return to Invoice, Key Protection etc.

Please note that there is no Hyundai Insurance. Basically, the Hyundai Assurance program is working as insurance aggregators by offering you insurance from the partnered insurance company. In my case, they gave me Bharti AXA General Insurance policy (which was merged with ICICI Lombard in Oct).

You can actually go ahead and get a quotation from any of the partnered insurance companies (in your case it seems to be Future Generali, SBI General and Chola as per the brochure shared by you) directly and then ask the dealer to match it. The insurance service level will remain the same either you take from dealers or directly from insurance companies who have partnered with Hyundai.