General Accident is a brand of one of the largest car insurance companies in the UK, Aviva. While you might get a cheap quote from General Accident, be aware that they're an online brand so you can't get customer support over the phone once your policy is up and running—read below to find out how this affects the most common customer complaints. To compare a General Accident quote to other brands in the car insurance market, click the blue "Get Quotes" button below to see how much you can save.

In This Review

• General Accident Car Insurance: Overall Review
• Customer Reviews and Ratings
• Cost Comparison and Discounts
• Cancellation fees, phone numbers and policy documents
• FAQs

General Accident Car Insurance Overall Review

General Accident car insurance might suit those looking for cheap car insurance, but beware that it's an online insurance brand so you won't be able to call and speak to anyone in customer service over the phone after your policy is up and running. Existing customers do have one opportunity to speak with customer service—during their renewal window from when they receive their renewal invite until the renewal date, when a contact number is displayed within their online account.

After reading through customer reviews, it seems that the best way to reach General Accident is by messaging through the General Accident Facebook page. There is a 24-hour helpline for claims, glass repair and accident recovery, however.

3 Things to Know About General Accident Insurance

General Accident Telematics

General Accident offers a telematics plan that theoretically helps safe drivers save more on their car insurance. Besides receiving an initial upfront discount, your driving behaviour throughout the year will be taken into account at renewal. There's an app to go along with the black box policy, for which you'll need to have a smartphone with iOS7 or Android 4, or higher.

Depending on your car model, you'll either get a small plugin device that you install yourself or, if that's not an option, they'll send out an engineer to professionally install a more suitable device in your car.

Drivers taking out a General Accident telematics policy should be aware that extreme or consistently bad driving behaviour may result in cancellation of your policy—this can include, for instance, being caught speeding. Each journey will receive a score between 0 and 100; you will also receive an overall score for each month. These scores are displayed in the app.

Here's what the black box device will record:

General Accident Black Box Rules

The telematics device calculates your speeding score based on: Abrupt Cornering, Lateral Movement, Mileage, Hard Acceleration, Hard Braking, Speeding, Road Type, and Trip Time.

Your policy will be cancelled with seven days written notice as required by the Road Traffic Acts if you:

In addition, if you incur three minor speeding warning messages (which occur if your car is driven over the legal speed limit) within any 30 day rolling period, they "reserve the right" to cancel your policy (with the same 7 day notice).

General Accident Features

Here is a high-level summary of General Accident comprehensive cover features for policies bought direct from the General Accident website—remember, these are always subject to conditions and exclusions, which you can read about in the policy documents.

How Good is General Accident Car Insurance?	A Good Policy Includes	Does General Accident Deliver?	General Accident Comprehensive Coverage
"Must Have" Features
Windscreen	Full repair or replacement		Up to the market value of your car if you use an Approved Repairer
Belongings	£200+		Amount shown on schedule
Keys	£300+		If you buy the add on
Protected NCD	2 times in 3 years (standard or optional extra)		If you buy the add on
Car recovery after accident	Included		Included
Courtesy car (repairs)	Minimum 14 days		Included (in GB, Ireland, Channel Islands and Isle of Man)
Repairs guaranteed	12-month guarantee		Lifetime guarantee as long as you own your car
"Should Have" Features
New car replacement	Theft or damage at least 60% of list price; cars up to 12 months old		Included, if repairing damage is more than 60% of the car’s UK list price & vehicle is within 12 months of purchase
Stereo and satellite nav	Market value for manufacturer fitted		Up to the market value of your car if permanently fitted; otherwise personal belongings limit
Alternative transport & Hotel after accident	£250+		If you've been in an insured accident, they'll recover your car and get you home or to your destination (in covered area) OR up to £150 for overnight accommodation or public transport
24-hour emergency helpline	Standard		Included
Courtesy car (total loss or theft)	Standard or add-on extra		If you buy the add on (5 to 21 days)
Motor legal expenses	Standard or add-on extra		Included
Breakdown cover	Standard or add-on extra		If you buy the add on
"Could Have" Features
Same cover in EU	Standard or add-on extra		Up to 90 days in any one trip
Child car seat replacement after accident, theft, fire	Ideally replaced even if no visible damage		Not included
Larger/premium courtesy car	Standard or add-on extra		Not available
Uninsured driver NCD protection	Standard		Included

General Accident Car Insurance Customer Service Reviews, Complaints and Ratings

General Accident generally has really improved in terms of customer reviews in the past year or so. But there are complaints, because as an online insurer, customers can only communicate with the company online or through email—a contact number is only available between a renewal invite and the renewal date. Let's take an in-depth look.

When understanding the financial health of an insurer, it is useful to look at independent financial credit ratings. In this case, since General Accident is part of Aviva, we looked at ratings for Aviva Insurance Ltd and found that all gave a 'stable' rating.

General Accident Trustpilot

Trustpilot reviews for General Accident are okay. General Accident insurance has been rated with 4.2 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot by close to 3736 existing customers. This is up from the terrible 1.4 in 2020, one of the lowest Trustpilot ratings we've seen for an insurer, 3.2 in 2021 and flat from 4.3 in 2022. 23% of customers gave General Accident a 1-star "bad" review, but 65% have rated it "excellent". What are the most common complaints? Most complaints seem to relate to difficulty resolving problems or individual situations due to lack of a customer service call centre. How important is that to you?

Here are a few positive and negative customer reviews of General Accident car insurance from Trustpilot to give you an idea of challenges faced by existing policyholders, as well as a taste of what they like:

"Very competitive price, easy and clear to navigate and use."

"Apart from having to renew password every time I logged into my details, I found the experience top rate."

"Easy to set up insurance. Great price as well. Was £200 cheaper than my renewal price."

"The app was so easy to use and gave many options to choose from so that my car insurance is now more suitable for me and my pocket."

"Very competitive price. Good well known Company. So easy from start to finish. All you need ie Breakdown Cover etc inclusive all in 1 payment. Also the excess is easily affordable"

"Horrific service. Had a black-box insurance service which worked well for all of 9 months. On the 9th month, my policy was cancelled due to "multiple occasions of speeding" on a road which had recently had its speed limit increased from 30 to 40. Their out-of-date database containing speed limits has resulted in me losing my 2nd year of no claims bonus... their support on the matter has been minimal..."

"Awful service. You do not receive any telephone support after 28 days and the email communication is poor at best. Their App / technology is also very poor so you'll struggle to get anything resolved."

"Poor and slow communication, poor at defending the drivers it insures."

"They are only contactable by email, and do not adhere to their 24 hour SLA with responses taking almost 3-5 days at the very minimum, this raises it's own challenges when urgent attention is required. Also, their online service portal is extremely limited, which may as well be redundant. I'd quite happily pay that bit extra for customer services contactable via phone and a quality online service portal."

"You buy a policy with telematics and then they deduct points for driving to and from work even though you told them what you do for a living! And if you go below 50 points, they cancel your insurance, something I cannot afford to happen. Cancelled policy half way through the year as cannot risk staying with a company that does not respond to emails after 14 days and there is no telephone contact number."

On the other hand, some customers report an 'excellent' service (only 22%, however). Here are a few samples from Truspilot of positive customer reviews for General Accident (corrected for spelling):

"After a taxi drove into the back of me and reading the reviews I was dreading the whole process but the service I received was brilliant. I had to log the accident online, but the claim staff were so helpful and my car was booked in really quickly. There is a useful link so you can track your repair.

"As mine was a 'non fault' claim my excess was waived and I also qualified for a car upgrade. Hopefully I won't need them again but I was impressed with General Accident and will renew next year."

"Made a slight mistake on my policy called as soon as possible and it was handled professional and stress free would recommend."

"GA have always been great on price and I knew that service provision was essentially online only as a result. The app and web interfaces are very efficient."

General Accident Reviews.co.uk

On Reviews.co.uk, General Accident gets 3.0 out of 5 stars by over 500 customers. Again, most negative reviews relate to the lack of customer service, which can be an issue when you need a change, the app doesn't work or a problem arises. Some customers complain of policies being canceled suddenly with little warning.

Aviva is the underwriter of General Accident policies, so it's important to consider the financial strength of Aviva. Aviva has been rated solid A by S&P, A2 by Moody's and A+ by Fitch.

General Accident Car Insurance Quote Comparison

General Accident offers cheaper car insurance for those on a budget. Our recent check of 50 postcodes for a sample 30-year-old driver of a 2017 Ford Fiesta showed General Accident prices were some of the cheapest available and were roughly in line with brands like Quotemehappy.co.uk (another Aviva brand).

Quotes will vary drastically for different driver profiles and cars, and on different days, so you may need to pay more or less than these sample rates. Use this information as an indication of how an insurance provider might compare in terms of price, although this can also change.

General Accident Car Insurance Discounts

As a budget car insurance brand, General Accident already offers lower-than-average prices. In addition there are a few other ways to save on a car insurance policy, such as savings for good driving records, no claims discounts and paying in full at the start of each policy year.

Admin and Cancellation Fees

Here are some of the fees you might have to pay; for a full list see their terms and conditions.

You will also be charge Insurance Premium Tax on the fees.

Plus you'll pay a pro rate time on risk charge for the time you've been covered, if the policy started before you cancelled.

Important General Accident Car Insurance Phone Numbers

General Accident is an online company so does not have a regular customer service call centre. You can get in touch with customer service via the link below.

Policy Documents & Claims

To find out more about the conditions and exclusions, read the policy wordings, important information document, terms and conditions, telematics terms, and more, which are available here.

FAQs

Other Car Insurance Reviews

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