Advice for my brother please

olliesmum

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the long post. I am after some advice for my brother who is at the end of his tether with regards his car insurance. To cut a long story short, he had a bump last week (skidded on ice) and when he contacted his insurance company, they told him he hadn't been insured since July! He had no idea about this - they said they wrote to him but he didn't receive the letter. He was a couple of days late with a payment (according to him) and paid the balance of the policy as soon as he realised. He was able to buy road tax in November (we thought this wasn't possible if you were uninsured) and hasn't been asked to return the certificate of insurance. When speaking to the insurance company, they refer him to his broker (QuoteA) and when he phones them, they say they can't understand why he wasn't told the policy was cancelled and he was allowed to pay the remainder of his premium. To add insult to injury, they will not help further and have offered him a £25 refund! He has enough savings to cover the cost of the other car's repairs but not if there are any other claims (ie injuries) and can't afford to repair his own car. Also, he is worried that he could lose his license, and my mum is worried about his job (he is in the RAF). He also has a baby arriving in 2 weeks or so, so he is very stressed and worried. Does anyone have any ideas about what he can do? Any help would be really appreciated

Olliesmum

dacouch

Could you answer us some questions so we can answer

a) Was your brother paying on the Inusrance companies own instalment scheme of a third party loan company called Close, Amber, Finsure or Premium Finance

b) Which Insurer is it

c) Dit they say they sent him a recorded delivery letter if so roughly when did they send it

d) When did he pay the balance of the premium and to whom

olliesmum

I have limited info at the mo - am going on what my mum's told me, and a rather panicked (and now slightly drunk) brother. Will get more info tomorrow hopefully.

a) Apparently the broker paid the premium in full, then my brother repaid them. Don't know about a finance company.

b) All I know at the moment is the broker - QuoteA

c) Apparently they sent him a letter (I assume it was recorded delivery) in July. He lives on an RAF base and sometimes has problems receiving mail - I assume that this will not be taken into account.

d) He was informed that one of the payments was "a few days late" (his words) and paid the balance of the premium straight away to the broker.

I know this info is very limited, but I only found out about all of this about an hour ago and he's in such a panic now, I can't get much sense out of him. Hope this is even slightly useful. Thanks

dacouch

For the broker to have invoked the policy correct they would normally send a recorded delivery letter to his last know address giving him 7 days notice. Ask the broker for the tracking number for the recorded delivery letter, you can then go to the post offices website and see what happened to the letter.

If you could try and get the other info it will help

olliesmum

Thanks dacouch, I'll speak to him tomorrow, hopefully he'll have calmed down slightly by then and I can get the rest of the info out of him.