Home insurance company failed to take DD payment 8 months ago

sjrsaj

I've just received a letter from Aviva, saying "earlier this year we experienced some technical problems, which led to us failing to collect your Direct Debit payment for your home insurance for £xxx.xx. Please accept our apologies for our mistake and let me assure you that your cover remains unaffected. To ensure your account remains up to date, we need to recover the missing payments."

I have the original documents Aviva (Norwich Union) sent me, and also the IMPORTANT: CONFIRMATION OF YOUR DIRECT DEBIT INSTRUCTIONS letter which has my bank details written down correctly.

The policy runs from April 2009 till March 2010, are they legally entitled to ask for the full amount for their mistake?. I realise they made a mistake, but with just paying car tax @ £175, tv license at £150 ish and now the coming months 2 x house insurance bills, it was not very nice of them to send a letter 2 days before Christmas!

thanks in advance for any advice

dzug1

Yes they are legally entitled to ask for the full amount.

You could ask them for time to pay or maybe spread it over the remaining instalments but you do still owe it and technically it is overdue.

Didn't you notice it hadn't been taken? (tongue in cheek mode on) and keep the money aside for when they caught up with it

sjrsaj

Don't check my statements fully as I have two bank accounts, and most of my DD payments are from my mortgage account. Hopefully they will spread the payments! thanks

sjrsaj

Spoke to their indian call centre and they didn't really understand why the letter was at a bad time (christmas), so they passed me on to customer services, and they fully understood and gave me 15% off to settle the bill.

I didn't have a problem paying the amount, just it was their mistake in the first place!, so I saved £30 on top

eschaton

sjrsaj wrote: »

Don't check my statements fully as I have two bank accounts, and most of my DD payments are from my mortgage account. Hopefully they will spread the payments! thanks

Ignorance is no excuse.