For me it wasn't 3 months but 104 days. The weekly feedback emails varied by 1 to 3 days late, with the performance grade calculated each time using all data to date. A vague text message on what I expected was the end (day 90) said "Just a couple of weeks left until your Plug & Drive review". The 14th week feedback wasn't received at all, ahead of the review end notification as it turned out.

The additional discounts are 4% for Gold, 2% for Silver - these apply before insurance premium tax (at 12%). 45% of customers receive Silver and a fortunate 10% get Gold. It isn't really HOW you drive that determines this but largely how MUCH you drive. Under 35 hours of car time away from home per week and under 200 minutes driving per week appears necessary for Gold. Under 50 hours and 300 mins for Silver. Interestingly for an average speed of 39 km/h this makes Gold impossible for annual mileage over 4,200 and Silver over 6,300.

The policy definitely lives up to the "black box" name, as there's scant detail available during purchase on how you are judged. I found later that their risk factors are: Accel/Decel/Corner (~0.4 G, 0.6 G, 0.35 G variable), Exposure to Risk (a measure of vehicle time away from 'home' location), Late Night Driving (even a second between 22:00 and 05:00 local), Short Trips (frequent short-distance trips per day) and Speeding (excess speed, likely 78+ mph). Their support reference things like "Average", "High" and even "Highest" but without clear definition of what these mean in terms of score. There's no online dashboard either.

I had one specific feedback email beginning "This week we noticed". The rest were all of the pattern "Did you know, the safest drivers are most likely to…" and completely unrelated to how I drove that week, just looping through a set of 4:

1. "…avoid harsh acceleration giving them more time to react to other drivers?"
2. "…leave enough room between them and the car in front which means that braking is smoother?"
3. "…accelerate smoothly, which could also help save money on fuel?"
4. "…steer clear of harsh braking giving them more time to react to other road users?"

The box is made by Redtail Telematics GB with GPS, accelerometers, rechargeable battery and SIM card. The 12 V plug part contains a hardware switch to physically detect when it's plugged in. It has to be plugged in for at least 95% of the time and 95% of the distance travelled. Yellow flashes then occasional red means activity recording, even when unplugged. It doesn't send back data gathered when unplugged.

I also had a non-fault claim through their handling company Auxillis, with several weeks delay before the approved garage was permitted to begin the repair work due to delays in that company's independent valuation estimator (Tec Reports).

Update: I received gold rating, yet my renewal price increased by 19.7% / £104.16, I left them and my simple claim remains unsettled after 90 weeks and counting.

Date of experience: 08 July 2018