car insurance put me down as "accident/claim in last 5 years" but i havent!!

emlou2009

hello, can someone tell me if the following is correct please? i am absolutely seething about it!

in january my car was keyed, and i rang my insurance company to ask if i would be able to claim. they said yes, but i didnt have the money to pay the excess, so we left it at that.

today, i rang them to change my address, to find that they had automatically renewed my policy just over a month ago (i had received no paperwork to say it was due to expire, but thats a different story!) and that they have increased my premium because i had an accident/claim?!

i havent claimed for anything, i havent had an accident! my car was keyed and i rang up to find out what my excess was and if i could claim if i wanted to, but they seem to have logged this against me without telling me? what if i had gone and insured myself with another company and put down truthfully that i'd had no claims or accidents, and they communicated with the original insurer, would i have been done for fraud?

is it possible to have this removed from my records? i am now in my third year of driving with no claims and i am very annoyed to think that they have messed this up!

Quentin

They haven't messed up.

They have correctly recorded the incident in your history. You are bound by your policy conditions to inform them of all losses even if they don't resulkt in a claim.

You will need to declare this to future insurers.

emlou2009

i havent lost anything?

i dont see how they can class someone keying my car but me not claiming, in the same way as having an accident, they arent even anywhere near in the same league!

Quentin

Trouble is you reported the incident (with a view to making a claim), and cannot now "un-report it"

(You have experienced a "loss" - presumably the incident has reduced the value of your car)

Ian_W

emlou2009 wrote: »

today, i rang them to change my address, to find that they had automatically renewed my policy just over a month ago (i had received no paperwork to say it was due to expire, but thats a different story!) and that they have increased my premium because i had an accident/claim?!

It's unfortunate you didn't get a renewal letter (sounds like around the time of the postal strikes) BUT MEGA FORTUNATE you were enrolled for auto-renewal.

If you hadn't been your car would have been uninsured, which if detected, is subject to a £200 fixed penalty fine, 6 points and the vehicle being seized - if taken to court the fine can be up to £5000 and up to 8 penalty points can awarded. Might be a lightbulb moment to make you realise you need to know your insurance renewal date!

As you didn't claim I don't think your NCD will be affected BUT the insurers will load the premium because they consider you to be a higher risk.

blueye

ive just been in a crash not my fault. i have to renew at the end of the month so have been getting quotes, i have to say ive been in an accident and i have checked what the quotes would be if i dont put the accident down and im happy to say that it doesnt affect it and sad to say that it does with one company cant remember which one though, i was a bit shocked when i saw it like, the quote was about 2 hundered more and all for being rear- ended.... hardly fair

Astaroth

As per previous discussions on here, a non-fault claim still costs your insurers money because they cannot recover staffing costs, phone calls, postage, offices etc. It is statistically provable that the more incidents your involved in the more likely you are to be involved in more. Non-fault claims therefore will impact premiums, in reality many insurers dont load for the first one but will after that one.

To the OP - no its not possible to remove it. You are obliged to inform them of any incident irrespective of if you intend to claim or not and they will take all incidents into consideration when pricing your policy. Vandalism is treated as a "fault" claim by most insurers because they are highly unlikely to ever track down the vandal and recover their costs from him/ her

lisyloo

Vandalism is treated as a "fault" claim by most insurers

BTW - "fault" in this case simply means "unrecoverable".
It doesn't mean it's your fault.
The insurer is really interested in whether they have to pay on not.
I think they could improve their wording to reoverable/unrecoverable rather than fault/non-fault.

Astaroth

Hence the "" around it