heated arguement with elephant insurance

alo6

hi there,

i recently bought a newcar, checked on confused first got a quote of £1200 which is not bad for my age (21) and car (golf).

all hunky dory, i was happy to pay that. so i went ahead and bought the car, phoned up elephant as i was half way through a policy with my old car (fiesta) with them, the fiesta was £800 a year which i decided to pay up, at £110 a month.

Anyway, i phoned them up to switch the car and they hit out with a premium of £330 a month. so automatically i was like "how". i explained how online it was £1200 and they put it down to interest on the premium, which is !!!!!!!! cos that is like 2 1/2 times the premium. so i had to settle with it as it was too late to do anything as i had already bought the car.

Later on in the week i sold my old car, and decided with the profit to pay up the rest of my insurance, phoned them up and they gave me a figure of £1350 for 5 months cover! i paid that and the girl said i would recieve a rebate of approx £400, and that was it.

waited a couple of days and got a letter through saying that they had sent my refund of £401 to my bank account and expect it within 7-10 working days, i phoned them up and asked the girl if this was right, she talked me as if i was stupid and said it had already been sent, just wait for it.

11days, still no money so i phoned them up and explained again, then after 10mins of head scratching he said i was not due a refund, so i was rather angry that i paid all that money for the insurance under the impression i was getting an refund of approx £400 (confirmed in writing and confirmed verbally).

so......what im asking is do i have a leg to stand on? i mean the money is gone now but its rather close to christmas.

sorry about the long post.

davidjwest

I assume they record their calls? Phone up and ask to speak to a supervisor and get them to trace the calls and sort out what they are playing at. If they say they can't do this then tell them that under the Data Protection Act they are obliged by law to keep records of such conversations - it's great when you can quote the DPA in YOUR favour for a change.

alo6

yea, i requested a callback from the supervisor and he stated himself he has a log of the people that mis informed me and that they would get there wrists slapped and re-trained. he asked if i wanted to take it further and i said yes, he then imediatly turned arrogant gave me his name and ext number and pretty much hung up

where do i go from here, any ideas?

davidjwest

You need to put the complain in writing now and threaten to go to the ombudsman if they don't compensate you satisfactorily. Technically you've no automatic rights to anything as it sounds like human error on their part, although they may be willing to give you some compensation for the hassle.

Their address is:

elephant.co.uk
Capital Tower
Greyfriars Road
Cardiff
CF10 3AZ

If there are several people misinforming you then either their systems or training isn't up to scratch.

Here's the Ombudsman website:

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

I'd be inclined to make the first letter quite pleasant, point out the hundreds of pounds you paid them without ever having made a claim and they may be more generous. Good luck!

Premier_2

I'm sorry, I'm not following this at all.

I understand you used a compariosn site to check on annual premiums.
However, having established you thought the existing insurer would be competitive, you really should have contacted them before the purchase to clarify things and set things up in advance. Then the insurance could have been effective from a certain time, or you could have agreed to call them when you wanted it to start.

You said the old fiesta was £800, but you were paying £110pm. Was that every month, because that would be £1320 pa. One heck of an interest rate if that's correct.

Then you said there was a £1350 additional premium to pay for switching to the Golf mid year. Why did they expect to give you £400 back?
Either it was £1350 additional, or it was £1350 for the whole year.
If it was £1350 for the whole year, then that's about £675 for the remaiming half year. (about £275 uplift compared to the fiesta for 6 months)

Either way, you don't usually pay £1350 and get £400 back. Remember, you've only paid £400 (plus interest) and that covered the fiesta for the time it was at risk. Now you pay the remaining £400 (plus interest) plus the uplift in premium for the remainder of the year (plus interest) and any small fee to change car details.

I've obviously got this all wrong, so going with your sceario, if they have misled you you should take it higher as you said you wished. You obviously had the option to cancel the fiesta insurance mid year (for a fee) and take insurance elsewhere for the Golf. As you were informed a price acceptable to you, you elected to just switch the car details instead. They can't expect you to now pay loads more. They need to come to some agreed resolution, even if that means now cancelling the insurance and allowing you to go elsewhere as you always had the right to do.

raskazz

davidjwest wrote: »

I assume they record their calls? Phone up and ask to speak to a supervisor and get them to trace the calls and sort out what they are playing at. If they say they can't do this then tell them that under the Data Protection Act they are obliged by law to keep records of such conversations - it's great when you can quote the DPA in YOUR favour for a change.

They are not obliged to keep recordings of conversations by the Data Protection Act but they are required to comply with a the rules pertaining to Data Subject Access Requests if they do hold recordings.

mollycat

Was it a trunk call?

Wig

I think you did it all wrong, You should have cancelled the fiesta insurance (and taken the 1 month premium hit) and then started a new policy with the online quote. By the sounds of it you paid more than double the online quote.

Actually what you should have done was said "Therefore I want to cancel the Fiesta insurance, please put me through to your retentions department" When you spoke to retentions you should have said "either give me the online quote or cancel my policy"

As to the other problem of the refund, I don't understand anything you said about that.

Lemonade_Pockets

I had a similar problem with Elephant.

I.e had a look online to see what the cost of the new car i was purchasing would be for a year. Rang them up to change it and they tried to wack me.

A lot of arguing later the agreed to match the price that i was quoted on their website for 1 years insurance. Took about 2hrs in total, David from kula lumpa took a bit of getting through too.

Although they still cocked it up. My car had a a lot of optional extra's fitted to it, in the first phone call they either didn't ask me or (as i suspect) used the word modifications to which i replied no - they where options fitted brand new at the factory. I queried it when i got my policy (as the wording said this car has no additional options) and was then informed it would be another £60. I pointed out that they'd cocked up intially so i wasn't willing to pay.

Cue we'll listed back to the original call (which was 2hrs long) and if we made a mistake you won't be charged. However if you "lied" we'll charge you.

Took them ages to get back to me, and after being chased at least twice, left a short message saying essentially that i'd lied (why would i lie, then ring up to querey it?). And charged the £60.

Anyway lifes to short and it was only £60, so i let it lie.

But they are a royal pain in the !!!!. Cheap to start with but obviously set out to shaft you if you need to change mid-term. So i sympathise, follow the advice on here chase them.

Wig

I think I read somewhere, maybe on here maybe on honest john, that when an insurer asks about modifications, they mean modifications from the basic model supplied by manufacturer, so you have to say what additional extras your car has got.

I agree it is not very well explained. (not at all well explained). Perhaps Raskazz can comment on this?

MarkyMarkD

No insurer is obliged to match a "new customer" quote for an existing customer changing vehicle. Unfortunately, they've got you over a barrel and can quote any additional premium they like.

Most insurers charge something vaguely reasonable; others probably don't, because they want to make money.

I am suddenly understanding the £1,350 extra and the £400 refund bit, and why the £1,350 is so much more than you expected. I think you added the Golf as a SECOND CAR to your existing policy - which would be more expensive than the online figure, because you would get no NCD - and the £400 was the refund for cancelling the ORIGINAL policy part-way through.

If so, that was a numpty way to do it.