R U paying for phone insurance you can't use

blue68

I recently had to cancel a direct debit from my bank account after changing my mortgage (thanks for the good advice Martin). Whilst looking through my direct debits I noticed one for £2.45 p/month ladled "Homecare Insurance Ltd", I couldn't think what this might be for so I cancelled it, hoping they would contact me so I could find out what I was paying for.
March 2006 I received a letter from "Fonesafe" informing me that my payment for mobile phone insurance could not be collected. Result, I now knew what I'd been paying for.
After racking my brain I vaguely remembered taking out the optional insurance when I bought my 1st mobile phone. I'd bought this phone back in 1999 from The Pocket Phone Shop and I hadn't received any correspondence regarding the insurance since then, in fact I'd forgotten I'd taken it out. I felt annoyed that they had not attempted to contact me in all these years. All my other insurances; house, car etc all contact me yearly to ensure that nothing needs amending on the policy before they start the next years cover. If I'd lost my phone or it had been stolen I would not have claimed on this insurance as I'd forgotten I had it.
Worse still, when I phoned Fonesafe to complain about their lack of correspondence I found that I was paying for insurance on the phone I originally purchased back in 1999, the policy didn't cover any other phone that I had upgraded to. I hadn't used my 1st phone since I upgraded in early 2000, so I had basically been paying money to fonesafe to insure a phone I didn't have any more for about 7 years.
To say I'm annoyed is an under statement, surely companies like this should have to send out at the very least yearly statements to their customers. I wonder how many people are paying money to fonesafe each month to insure phones they no longer have.

Regards
Livid of Halifax.

*!*HIBS*!*

I guess the moral of this story is to check your statements each time they come through the post or online if you have Internet banking before something or you notice something bad happens, e.g. fraudulent activity.

With your insurance, some insurance companies claim that they will only insure up to 5yrs for example, although I don't know what happens to the DD that is set up. I can see that in your case they still continued to collect it. :mad:

Like with many DDs once you have set it up it is easy to forget about them and that's how some companies make money from you. A clear example are the magazine subscriptions, you have to set up a DD to get the free magazines, hoping that that you will forget to cancel your DD during the free months copies of magazines, you end up paying more than you bargained for.

Maybe print off a list of all the DDs going out and the company that it is going to so that you know who and where these payments are going to. When you cancel a DD make sure you go to the bank or go online to cancel so that the company expecting the DD wil not get it, assuming you want to cancel the payments.