Swinton Motorcycle Insurance fees

marascali

Hi

I cancelled my motorbike insurance within the 14 day cooling off period, but swinton charged me £50 admin, and almost £50 for the 14 day cover. The whole policy only cost £140 in the first place. I feel cheated, is there anything I can do to recover some of my money?

Unhappy Swinton Customer:mad:

Oscar_The_Grouch

They are allowed to charge you an admin fee, but they have to charge pro-rata (ie 1 365th of the premium per day) for the 14 day period. As a rule, their crummy system can't cope with this and they won't do anything about this unless you complain.

The moral to this story; Don't use Swintons as even if the price is great, the service is uselss.

stator

They don't refund you exactly pro-rata like that. For some reason it's more complicated than Premium / 365 * number of days you have insurance. For some reason they charge you more for the begining of the insurance than the end.

Sarsie

Nothing like causing a fuss to embarrass a company/industry. This is exactly the sort of thing BiKE, Ride and MCN print in thier problem pages for thier experts to reply to. Maybe have a leaf through yours or your mates stash of back issues and see if this ones been done before or if you could email it to the press at all? Getting a big publication like MCN, BiKE, Ride or so on to take it up could see Swinton or any rules that let Swinton behave this way get seriously challenged (with minimal effort from you) so perhaps a few press emails is a good idea?

I'm annoyed for you I really am, it's a scandalous £100 when I would've thought you ought to get it all, or at least nearly all, back too... But I dunno a lot about it on a technical level... I hope you get the replies you need here though.

Ride Safe ~ Sar

Oscar_The_Grouch

stator wrote: »

They don't refund you exactly pro-rata like that. For some reason it's more complicated than Premium / 365 * number of days you have insurance. For some reason they charge you more for the begining of the insurance than the end.

They aren't allowed to - this would breach FSA rules and the rules laid out in the Distance Selling Regulations.

Here's another option:

If you are charged an admin fee by Swintons, send them a written complaint about the fee. They have to respond with a "final response letter" within 8 weeks. After that, you contact the Financial Ombudsman Service via their online form.

Regardless of whether your complaint is upheld by the FOS or not, Swintons will be charged £500 for the FOS adjudication on the case. In the long run, it will cost Swintons more in fees to the FOS than they make in fees charged to customers.

pt111

In the exact same position myself, canceled within the 14 day period, on a £190 policy.

£46 went from my bank account by direct debit, so after the policy was canceled I stopped the direct debit. I was then sent a letter demanding a £56 cancellation fee which they informed me they were going to take from my bank via direct debit. That didn't happen. So I was sent another letter today stating they were going to charge an extra £12 as they were not able to do this.

I think this is excessive. I agree with the original poster. This seems too much particularly on a cancellation within the 14 day period.

I hope you get to recover some of your money back. I might do what Oscar suggested and complain about the fees and see what the response is.

Thanks to the other posters in this thread too for the info.

marascali

Thank you so much for this information, it is invaluable, I felt really helpless and cheated last week, now I feel empowered with your info to cause maxium grief to Swinton.

Thank you Thank you Thank you

marascali

Hi

Maybe we should both contact the the big Bike Publishers, I quite sure others out there have had a similar experience. Swinton should be shamed into treating their customer better. I am going to write my letters tonight.

binriptoff

Similar story - was told £50 cancellation over the phone for multi bike policy and cancelled within cooling off period to be presented with bill of over £200 - almost entire premium... How did your complaints go?