MSE News: Are you a Swinton Insurance customer? Beware its 'pre-renewal' deposit

If this is as bad as it sounds, it's scandalous, and something the FCA is going to beat them up for, fine them, and make them refund everyone anyway a few years down the line. Even if it's in the Ts&Cs, an unfair T&C is an invalid T&C.

I don't like Swinton because of the all the junk mail personally. It's been years since I used them, but I still get no end of letters from them around my renewal date. And I wouldn't use them again because of their reliance on cashback to get you the cheapest quote - I don't want to be an unsecured creditor waiting for cashback for 90 days from a company whose business model I consider to be shaky.

I always use comparison sites at renewal, which means that invariably I change insurance company each year.

At the same time as sending them confirmation of my NCD, I also give notice in writing that I do not wish to renew the policy at the expiry date.

This has worked except on one occasion with Quinn, who claimed they had no record of receiving the letter, until it was pointed out that if they received the confirmation of NCD, then they also had had notice of non-renewal.

They immediately backtracked.

At first I liked how swinton had a local branch and I was able to go in there and hand in my paper work and speak face to face to someone. That was until I noticed a few months later my DD was just over £2 more than it should have been. I went into my branch and asked them why, even before I finished explaining the whole situation the man knew that it would be where I hant returned my signed forms with 2 weeks of taking the policy and had been charged a £25 fee that has been spread across my DD payments.

However I hand delivered all the signed documents a couple of days after taking out the policy so I knew that they had been in on time. (Unfortunately I hadn't thought it necessary to get a receipt at the time.) He very quickly removed the fee and adjusted the DD to pay back the extra payments.

My girlfriend who was with at the time then asked if the same fee had been applied to her account, the answer was yes. Her policy was taken out a few months after mine, and again the signed documents were hand delivered well within the 2 week return time.

By the way he knew so readily why our payments were higher and that the same fee had been applied to both policies it was very obvious that this was a common trick they use to try their luck and hope you don't notice the small extra amount added onto your DD (It was a good few months before I picked up on).

On top of this I had noticed the small print about the pre-renewal deposit and rang them in good time to say that I wont be renewing and not to take a deposit. But they still took the deposit, they did give it back easily enough when I contacted them.
My major problem with this is that due to the the process you do not have that money available in your account for a few days until it is refunded and if that was a few days before pay day I would have be seriously struggled. (although if it came to it I should have been able to use the DD guarantee to get instant refund).

Summary I always advice people to never use Swinton whenever talking about insurance.

The reason many people agree to auto renewal is that they are unaware of it when they take the policy out.

I have just moved my motor insurance and at the bottom of the page it stated that it would auto renew. There was no option to opt out.

Whilst I don't want my policies to auto renew I do work in the insurance industry, on the commercial side, and it is amazing how many policies lapse becuase the broker is unable to obtain renewal instructions from the insured. Then a few weeks later we get a call saying that it had been allowed to lapse in error (all sorts of excuses follow such as being on holiday, didn't receive docs, thought they had 14 days of grace etc). They often get upset when I tell them they need to take out a new policy as we are unable to backdate insurance.

As you can see from the above, auto renewal may be beneficial for some people but not others. Regardless of whether your policy auto renews you need to read letters/emails sent to you by the insurer and respond prior to renewal date or you may have insurance you don't want or be uninsured. Neither are a good option.