Hughes Insurance is one of the biggest car insurance brokers in Northern Ireland and sports a number of high street branches for those who like a personal touch. But for those on a budget, does Hughes offer good value for money? Let’s take a look at what Hughes Insurance has to offer.

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In This Review

• Hughes Car Insurance: Overall Review
• Customer Reviews and Ratings
• Cost Comparison and Discounts
• Cancellation Fees, Phone Numbers and Policy Documents

Hughes Car Insurance Overall Review

Is Hughes car insurance any good? Mediocre customer reviews don't inspire a lot of confidence, but keep in mind that the relatively small number of online reviews may not be reflective of the typical customer experience.

In terms of features, Hughes Insurance Car Insurance product (comprehensive cover) achieves a top rating as it covers most of the essential features. But they are a broker and have other car insurance products as well—and these are not as robust when it comes to features.

If you get a quote from Hughes, we'd recommend checking the policy documents carefully before accepting a quote to ensure that it offers the features you care about.

The Hughes Insurance Car Insurance product includes windscreen repair or replacement, cover for belongings, new car replacement and child seat replacement up to the same value in the event of a covered claim. They also include an uninsured driver promise, which means (subject to conditions, as with everything) that you don't have to pay the excess and you won't lose your no claims bonus if you make a claim for an accident that wasn't your fault and the responsible driver is not insured.

Also, if your car is written off, they'll pay for any unused road tax that you can't recover from the licensing authorities. You’ll also receive up to 90 days cover at the same level when driving in the EU. One final feature to note is that the personal belongings limit is bumped up from £200 to £400 in December to cover any Christmas shopping in your boot.

However, there are some limitations to point out. For example, as far as we can tell there is no guarantee on work carried out by their approved repairers in the event of a damage claim. And while the policy documents mention cover for a hotel after a car accident if your car is not drivable, and they do give some money for a replacement vehicle, it seems there's no mention of cover for other types of alternative transportation (e.g. taxi).

The Hughes cancellation costs are structured a bit differently to what you might find elsewhere but in the end are roughly in line with average cancellation fees in the UK.

Customer service is open 6 days a week (closed Sunday), and those living in or near can pop into a local branch near them.

Features

Hughes Insurance car insurance is a broker so their policies are underwritten by a panel of insurers. Here is a high-level summary of features on the top-rated Hughes Insurance Car Insurance comprehensive car insurance policy—remember, these features are always subject to conditions, exclusions and endorsements so you should check the policy documents and features yourself before you buy in case they differ from this sample document. And Hughes' other car insurance products have a different set of features that may be worse for you.

How Good is Hughes Car Insurance?	A Good Policy Includes	Does Hughes Deliver?	Hughes Comprehensive Coverage
"Must Have" Features
Windscreen	Full repair or replacement		Unlimited cover if you use an approved repairer (National Windscreens or Autoglass)
Belongings	£200+		Up to £200 (£400 in December!)
Keys	£300+		Replacement of keys and locks if your car keys are lost or stolen
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
Repairs guaranteed (if use approved repairer)	12-month guarantee		No guarantee listed
"Should Have" Features
New car replacement	Theft or damage at least 60% of list price; cars up to 12 months old; first owner		If the cost of repair is valued at more than 50% of the cost of buying an identical new car at the time of the loss or damage
Stereo and satellite nav	Market value for manufactur fitted		Unlimited for original manufacturer-fitted equipment, otherwise £750 for permanently-fitted equipment
Alternative transport & Hotel after accident	£250+		Up to £175 for accommodation and a replacement vehicle for up to 48 hours
24-hour emergency helpline	Standard		24 hour claims lines
Courtesy car (total loss or theft)	Standard or add-on extra		Up to 7 days
Motor legal expenses	Standard or add-on extra		If you buy the add on
Breakdown cover	Standard or add-on extra		Included
"Could Have" Features
Same cover in EU	Standard or add-on extra		Up to 90 days
Child car seat replacement after accident, theft, fire	Ideally replaced even if no visible damage		Replaced with a similar model and standard
Larger/premium courtesy car	Standard or add-on extra		Not available
Uninsured driver NCD protection	Standard		Included
Cancellation fee	No more than £50		No cancellation "fees" but the pro-rata charge for the period you were covered is subject to a minimum £25 (within the 14-day cooling off period and afterwards)

Learner Driver Cover

Young drivers across Northern Ireland can get insurance from Hughes Insurance via a HughesDrive policy, which is Telematics-based car insurance. How does it work? Download an app and connect to your car using Bluetooth. You driving is tracked—speed, braking, acceleration, cornering, and usage. Each week that you get a "green" driving score you earn a voucher. These vary from week to week but could be a voucher for Pizza Express or online shopping with Amazon. We should point out, however, that the HughesDrive app only gets 1.5 out of 5 stars, so customers have their challenges with it. We think this review sums it up:

"There are so many 1 star reviews on here that i was really worried, because i had already bought the insurance without having read the reviews. I think you do need a little patience with the app but the customer services are very helpful and they appreciate it if you contact them about the issue as soon as it arises.

You are supposed to keep location services on at all times but i’ve had to turn mine off because it would record when i’m not in the car driving - when the phone is in my pocket, when i’m in other people’s cars and even on the TRAIN!! Resulting in me getting minus points for speed and usage, when i’m not even driving. So it has brought my score down and out of the green. It is true that often it records the journey halfway through. They really need to sort these aspects out because frankly it is unfair!

The app isn’t as bad as i thought it would be but you definitely do have to be careful and not keep location services on all of the time because of it’s inaccurate tracking, so i guess if you can’t be bothered with having to open the app every time you get in and out of the car and not just be able to set off then it’s not for you, it definitely does require patience..."

Hughes Car Insurance Customer Service Reviews and Ratings

Hughes gets pretty poor reviews from existing customers for service and experience. But—and there's a bit BUT here—we should point out that their Trustpilot and Reviews.co.uk ratings are based on very few customers. That signals to us that the resulting ratings are not statistically significant so shouldn't be taken too seriously on their own. And, it implies that the reviews reflect complaints only—not a sampling of experiences from a range of customers who would have a range of experiences.

But we can still learn a lot about the issues people have by looking into what's behind the ratings. That is, what are the complaints? We scoured through online reviews to learn a bit more about the experiences of Hughes Insurance customers.

Hughes Insurance Google

(Note: we don't see Hughes Insurance on Google now, but are keeping these reviews up for historical purposes.) 65 customers had left reviews of Hughes Insurance on Google, giving them a rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars. Here are few of the notable comments that might prove useful to know—as you'd imagine from a 3.6-star review, customer experiences are mixed:

"Brilliant insurance company. Couldn't recommended them enough. Been with them 2 years now an hopefully a 3rd. Very affordable and local. Staff are also very nice and friendly."

"They will try to do their best to meet you if you get a better quote elsewhere. Helpful."

"Dreadful, I get a new car, phoned for a quote, it is now the next day and although they promised to contact me with the quote. Nothing, I'm having to start all over. Bangor Office."

"I phoned on sat 12th Sept about a commercial insurance to be told I had to arrange a call Monday to Friday when the department was open the agent arranged this for call back Monday 14th. Its Tuesday 15th still no call back. Disappointed."

Hughes Insurance Trustpilot

Only 21% of policyholders rated Hughes on Trustpilot with a 5-star "Excellent" rating, while a whopping 75% gave the company the lowest score of just 1 star—however these results reflect under 100 reviews left by customers. We don't think this is a statistically representative number of policyholders, so we are wary of making a judgment base on so few responses. In addition, it's clear that Hughes doesn't ask customers to fill out a Trustpilot review when they buy a policy, like a lot of other insurers—and this practice, which Hughes appears not to do, tends to flood the results with a host of positive reviews left by people who just bought a policy and raise the star rating. (Meaning the reviews up now are mostly people seeking out a way to complain, so the reviews are nearly all negative. We wonder if Hughes is perhaps looking worse as a result relative to competitors than it really is...) With that in mind, let's take a look at the best and worst reviews left by Hughes car insurance customers on Trustpilot:

"Paid extra for breakdown service onto my policy, car broke down over 70 miles from home on a Friday night. No garages open and asked to be towed home, spent hours on calls trying to sort it with Hughes and their breakdown providers and no one was available for a breakdown call out. So stayed in a hotel that night, Saturday morning I looked up open garages one 5 miles away, so when breakdown finally came, said it would be £24 cash, card payments were not available. Explaining I was 70 miles from home and use contactless payments I didn't have the money to pay it, was there any way to use card "no not my.problem, so had to leave the car to a garage 2 minutes from were I had broken down even tho the garage was not open. Was left 45 minute walk from the bus station. Now I have to call the garage 70 miles away to see if they will even look at the car."

"Have to send a letter to cancel....A letter.....in 2022. Literally every other time I've cancelled car insurance to move to another provider has been over the phone and done without issue."

"Went down to Coleraine office to sort out my mum's renewal. Good deal offered saving her £100 on last year and for the same price she is able to add me on as a named driver for the first time."

"Never answer the phone."

"Very uncompetitive pricing, unfriendly phone experience, when I raised issues I got a really patronising response. When the sky high renewal came it it was a no-brainer."

Hughes Car Insurance Reviews.co.uk

Looking for more information, we also read through the reviews at Reviews.co.uk, where Hughes was rated 1.9 out of 5 stars by 59 customers. Only 22% of reviewers recommend Hughes Insurance. Here are some highlights:

"... they are friendly helpful positive and quick to respond. They're truly good hearted people. You're not just a number. They know and remember you by name. Love you guys."

"... Got me a better rate than my 9 years with my previous insurer and was so professional about the whole thing. An absolute pleasure to work with..."

"... They miss-sell you a policy and then when you cancel bill you £160 for less that 10 days insurance."

"... If you breakdown you do all the work yourself phoning different companies, if you have courtesy car you dont get it if garage dont [sic] offer service, if you cancel your policy they lose documents and send constant texts, emails, letters chasing you for bank details ignoring your requests to cancel policy even after you send the certificate of motor insurance back with a cancellation letter..."

Hughes Car Insurance Quote Comparison

We did a quick check of customer comments on various review sites to see what policyholders say about Hughes prices. Overall, we noticed a significant amount of variability in customer opinions on how much value for money Hughes offers. Prices for car insurance can really be all over the map, depending on the factors of your application such as your age, how long you’ve been driving, your postcode, your car and even when you buy your policy. If you want to compare Hughes Insurance to other brands, try our car insurance partner QuoteZone.

Hughes Car Insurance Deals

It’s well worth paying annually instead of monthly if you can, in order to avoid paying the interest charges that car insurance companies charge on monthly instalments.

If you're able to park your car in a safer location, such as a garage or even a private driveway, you are likely to save money on your car insurance versus leaving it on the street overnight. For other tips, see our research on how to get a car insurance discount.

It's always a good idea to compare the market also, especially when it comes time for renewal, to make sure you'll getting a good deal. You can get a quote from Hughes Insurance from our car insurance partner QuoteZone, a comparison engine that works with over 100 brands in the UK car insurance market.

Hughes Cancellation Fees

According to the policy wording, Hughes insurance has a slightly different cancellation policy and charges from other insurance companies. Hughes doesn't mention a cancellation "fee" that we can find (as most brands do), but instead says they'll charge a minimum premium of £25 (plus insurance premium tax) when they calculate the pro-rata charge for the period you were covered. It's normal to charge a pro-rata amount of the premium for time you were covered, but not usual to impose a minimum. The industry standard is to charge a cancellation fee instead of imposing a minimum to the pro-rata premium charged for the time you were covered before cancellation. For reference, the average car insurance cancellation fee is approximately £24 during the cooling off period and £55 afterwards.

Of course, if you've made a claim—in that case you'll need to pay the entire premium/full outstanding balance. And please keep in mind that the underwriter may charge a cancellation fee—the cost of cancellation referred to above is what you pay to Hughes, the broker.

Hughes Car Insurance Contact Numbers

If you want to get in touch with your local Hughes Insurance branch, the opening times are Monday to Friday 09:00-17:00, Wednesday 09:30-17:00, Saturday CLOSED, Sunday CLOSED. Here are the relevant contact numbers. Note, many of the branches closed during the pandemic and have now been permanently closed:

FAQs

Policy Documents

To learn more, check out the Hughes car insurance policy wordings—from their website.

Other Car Insurance Reviews

If you'd like to compare Hughes to other car insurance companies, see some of our list of car insurance reviews. Some popular car insurance company reviews are listed below: