Insurance Refund

[tenkfeet]

With many insurers you can insure a second car for a couple of months as a add on policy. When I was selling my Fiesta ST last year Direct line insured it for under £30 a month fully comp.

[111Robin]

That would have been fine if I had only planned on insuring it short term which wasn't the case. Phoned them again today for a pointless rant but all they said was they actually did me a favour by discounting the cancellation fee otherwise I'd have owed them another payment!!. They said I was charged 40% of the full premium for 6 weeks (12% of the full year) plus a £70 cancellation fee. Maybe most insurers are the same but its a real eye opener on what they get up to.

[j2 lot]

I Let my policy auto renew at the beginning of the week as I couldn't get a cheaper quote. When I got the paperwork in today I was shocked to see it included £16.44 for breakdown cover. I phoned and they said its free in the first year but chargeable after that - they were happy to deduct the cost from my renewal but it just goes to show you do need to read through the paperwork or they will fcuk you over given the chance.

[campbell]

Auto renewal is very clever.

Thieves...

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[Shug]

I tend not to let them auto renew now... And I'm mega lazy about that sort of thing.

I did get a renewal quote down to close enough on my bike insurance last year, so decided to stick with them, rather than the paperwork rigmarole with a new insurer for the sake of a tenner. However, when I phoned a few months ago to add my winter bike to the policy (something I'd done successfully the year before) they informed me that they'd changed underwriter on my policy and it's something I couldn't do any more.

No correspondence about losing that ability, but in the end, all I could do is sign up for another policy with zero effective no claims for that bike... Thankfully it's worth buttons so didn't cost much anyway, but in principle, it's hugely annoying to have a facility removed without any knowledge.

[robin]

I think they are obliged to tell you about changes in cover when renewing. Of course that will have been in the wedge of paper/email that you filed under whatever

[Shug]

I think they are obliged to tell you about changes in cover when renewing. Of course that will have been in the wedge of paper/email that you filed under whatever

Almost definitely not - given I was insuring a single bike at the time of renewal and had taken one off earlier in the year, they could quite legitimately say that it didn't apply to my policy as it stood. So I can see how they could get away with not supplying the info.

[David]

Learnt the hard way too. Cancelled a policy and lost about £100.

But a friend in the business did point out that most of what you pay is fees and commission, the actual premium to the underwriter is often around 50% of what you pay. So any refund is going to be 50% of pro rata at best.