@nickh: Awesome, thanks so much for sharing that. I ran out of time in my lunch break today to call people; if you get an affirmative from Admiral then you might have saved me a whole load of hassle, and found a solution to our problems.

Here’s a quick recap of conversations I’ve got in motion to try and sort out this mess:

• RCI: I’ve asked if there’s any possibility to have a Dutch-style battery-only insurance provided for ~£10/month. I’m doubtful anything will come of this, but worth a try. I’ve also asked for the decision-makers to consider that this is a big oversight in terms of customer experience
• P F Spare (PlugInsure): PlugInsure’s underlying insurer pulled their EV deal, but they’re chasing a new provider. I’ve emailed to ask if they can cover the battery and car under one policy with their normal (non-EV) providers
• My dealer: I’ve emailed a sitrep to my dealer, expressing my displeasure and pointing out that I may have to cancel my order. Hopefully he can apply some pressure to the marketing and customer services people to try and resolve the ambiguous wording/inconvenient terms of the battery lease. He’s been ace so far and I’m a bit annoyed they didn’t give him the information we need either, as it puts him in the firing line of angry customers when it’s actually a strategic policy cock-up
• Renault Insurance: Trying to get a cheaper quote from them for my missus. The chap there also said someone from Renault Customer Services would be in touch. Given that they dealt with my previous complaints about British Gas very efficiently and took my desire to help as an early adopter in good faith, I have some hope that we might get a response
• Admiral: I’ve got a quote in flight I need to chase up. Hopefully thanks to the sterling efforts of @nickh this one will be a little easier, and will at least take all other routes off the critical path to Zoe ownership

I’ll post any updates I have so hopefully other prospective owners can benefit. I’d urge you all to chase dealers/Renault customer services/RCI if you’re in any sort of dodgy situation, as the more of us highlight the issue the sooner Renault may do something about it. Thanks to everyone that’s contributed knowledge/quotes/documents to this discussion – hopefully together we can iron out all the kinks in the process.

Also, apologies in advance for any ranting I do on here, it’s my only EV-rage outlet 🙂 I’m loathed to whinge to my colleagues as all I’ll get is “well it’s your fault for getting an electric car in the first place!”

QuoteMeHappy doesn’t have very much info on their site at all – least of all an email address or phone number. However, they do come up as the best quote for me from CompareTheMarket who *do* list the Zoe in the car choices.

CompareTheMarket results for me were £650 for QuoteMeHappy, £750 for Admiral and Elephant (also Admiral) before launching off to over £900 for other providers.

Does anyone have contact details for QuoteMeHappy?

Ok, I’ve found an email address for QuoteMeHappy in their customer complains leaflet: team@quotemehappy.com. I’ve emailed asking whether my quote includes the leased battery and whether I need to do anything special.

I had a call back from Renault Insurance. The could only go as low (ha!) as £1,400.

The guy I spoke to was very helpful and asserted that a verbal confirmation in a recorded call would be enough to ‘cover my back’ with regards to Admiral – so even if it turns out in the event of an accident that they won’t cover the battery, I can assert that I was sold something under conditions that said otherwise.

@farblue: How do you actually get an insurance quote for a Zoe though QuoteMeHappy? They only seem to do online sales, and their website didn’t have the Zoe listed when I looked.