I tend to use sites like elephant to gauge "what if" scenarios.
What if I got a disqualification, what if I crashed, what if I made a claim?
That way you can work out what the worst case scenario is before you buy a car, and the chances of something happening whereby you can't keep it anymore.
In this case you could get a quotation for your current insurance with egafant, and then just go back one page, add a claim with the appropriate details, and see what the difference is.
( The first part is important, because it gives you the difference, as opposed to the difference between your current insurance and if you were with egafant )
As for the second thing, I'm afraid that if it were the case then you'd both be very silly buyers.
Leaving a private seller with a set of keys to you car is dangerous.
It's one of the reasons why I don't give the seller my address.
They could just come along one night and take the car back!
OTOHT, most sellers are genuine, have no reason to want to keep keys, and what you got is what he had.
Hope you get it sorted, preferably by finding the keys!
G
Thanks for your reply
The person we purchased the car from works offshore with my partner on certain jobs although he doesn't see him that often - he purchased some 3l Honda civic thing. Tbh I don't know why he only had one set of keys so i'll possibly be contacting him to see but, i'm sure if he had a duplicate he would have passed them over as we live 3 hours away from him.
Our current insurer is Elephant.co.uk and my partner was disqualified from driving in 2002 and has only had his license back 2 years 7 months - thats why I was considering paying it myslf rather than through insurance as he still has to declare his disqualification and with no claims I would imagine the premium would be bounced up big time but. I appreciate what you are saying by getting a quote to see what our options are - you have to explore every possible option.