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21st Mar 2024

Woman buys her first car on finance but can’t drive it after saying she’s employed

Ryan Grace

Woman buys her first car on finance but can't drive it after car insurance hike

‘I thought.. what a bargain!’

A woman in the UK has gone viral for her reaction to a car insurance quote hike caused by her working in Tescos.

TikToker Ella had been saving month-to-month to afford her first car, and was all set to join the 50 million road users across Britain, before being told she’d made a mistake with the insurance paperwork.

Ella initially marked herself as unemployed when filling out the form to get a car insurance quote. She thought she’d scored the deal of the century for a young driver when she was quoted just £1,500 for a first time driver which, as many of you will know, is on the cheap side nowadays.

What happened next was enough to make any first time buyer’s blood boil. When she corrected her status to employed, the quote skyrocketed from £1,500 to £5,000 for the exact same car.

Needless to say Ella was absolutely raging after buying the car only to find out that her insurance costs are completely unaffordable and it would have to sit in the garage for the foreseeable future.

“So I can’t buy the insurance and I couldn’t drive the car, so now the car is stuck at the car shop,” she said in a fit of rage.

In her TikTok, which has racked up a huge 200,000 views since posting, many others commented that they’d run into similar problems with their car insurance because of their employment status.

Ella said she “worked my a**e off” until she’d “got no a**e left” and “should be able to buy a f**king Tesla” at this point.

So why does Ella’s job at Tesco make a £3,5000 difference to her car insurance quote?

Well, car insurance companies split your car usage into one of three categories: social use, social and commuting or business.

If you tell your insurance company you work and therefore plan to commute to your job and use the roads more than a more casual Sunday driver, it sticks you in the social and commuting bracket which can mean higher prices.

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