No insurance renewal notice

Heather25

Our home insurance was renewed automatically without our receiving a renewal notice. The company (Budget insurance) now want a cancellation fee and an admin fee. When I phoned within a few days of the cover letter the broker said we should have known when our insurance was due. What even adds to it is I was held on the phone so long my phone bill states I'm being charged £4.70 for the call. Now they are saying they sent out a renewal notice and a welcome pack neither of which we received. Can we do anything about it? I have taken out insurance with another company.

Oscar_The_Grouch

Hi there

This is something that has come up frequently. You have 2 choices:

1. Accept it and walk away
2. Complain

Option 1:
Essentially, what Budget have done is fully legal, above board and there to protect you. Regardless of whether you received the renewal notice or not, they have renewed your policy to ensure that you still have cover. Before "auto renew", as it's commonly called, came in, people used to complain that they were not insured after a burglary/fire/flood and use the "I didn't receive my renewal notice" argument to say that it was the insurers fault they were stupid and had no cover. Auto renew means that you are never left without cover, but it is YOUR responsibility to cancel the cover if you don't want it. Quite clearly, you knew when your policy was due for renewal as you arranged cover elsewhere. The fact that you didn't cancel the Budget policy is, frankly, down to you. It's in their terms and conditions that were sent with your policy documents, but I expect you didn't read that either.

Option 2:
If you send an official letter of complaint, the insurer/broker must respond and give you what is called a "final response" letter that details how they have dealt with your complaint and what they propose to do about it. Most companys will waive their fee, but if they don't and you are still unhappy, you can complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service. This is free for you, but the insurer incurrs a fee of £500; much more than the fee they are charging you, which is why most companys will simply return the fee.

The problem with Option 2 is that the time and effort required by you to follow this up to the end is probably, based on your hourly wage, not worth it. This combined with the fact that the fee has been incurred by your error means that you are probably better off just following Option 1 and walking away.

lisyloo

the broker said we should have known when our insurance was due

Ultimately it's your responsibility to cancel it (or rather lapse it).
It's unfortuante if you didn't receive the letter and it got lost in the post, but technically you should have known both that your policy was renewable (in the initial docs) and also that it was up for renewal.

I put all my important financial date together in one place.
I use a spreadsheet on a comput but can be a diary etc.

I have insurance, MOT, warranty, service, also expiry of savings account bonus rates, ISA account bonus rates, NSI certificates etc.

This means it's all in one place in date order and I know what's coming up in advance.

A lot of people don't realise their contracts renew but if you didn't use a broker and did it yourself and then didn't read the documents..........well, what response do you expect??
Sorry.

Heather25

We did use a broker, just that we didn't receive a renewal notice which the broker said they sent. The Welcome Pack didn't arrive either. Thanks for the advice!

dunstonh

Heather25 wrote: »

We did use a broker, just that we didn't receive a renewal notice which the broker said they sent. The Welcome Pack didn't arrive either. Thanks for the advice!

How did you know your policy was renewing then if you didnt get a renewal notice?

Did you arrange an alternative? If so, how did you know the alterantive was better priced than the renewal?

lisyloo

We did use a broker, just that we didn't receive a renewal notice which the broker said they sent. The Welcome Pack didn't arrive either. Thanks for the advice!

This is exactly why I keep my own seperate copy of the dates and don't rely on other people or the post.

I'm sorry if you don't like the advice, but it is correct. Post can get lost and some of it is your responsibility.
This is exactly why there is auto-renewal, so people don't go driving uninsured and risk a conviction or an uninsued accident because one pirce of paper got lost in the post.

If you don't receive all the documents up front then I would chase them.
If they has multiple deliveries go missing, I would check the address and ask them to send it recorded delivery for 75p (or ask them to email it or fax it).

Sorry, but we don't live in a perfect world and to avoid subsequent hassle (or worse convictions etc.) I would advise everyone to be proactive. It's a fairly small amount of efforts writing some dates down but could save a lot of heartache and potentially prosecution or a crushed car.

Heather25

dunstonh wrote: »

How did you know your policy was renewing then if you didnt get a renewal notice?

Did you arrange an alternative? If so, how did you know the alterantive was better priced than the renewal?

They had already renewed the policy but then discovered the credit card that they held details for had expired so sent us a letter to obtain new payment details. They've sent us another letter confirming that they sent out a renewal letter and welcome pack so we're expecting the promised bill soon.

lisyloo

so sent us a letter to obtain new payment details

I bet that one arrived !!
Funny isn't it how when they want payment it never gets lost in the post.

Oscar_The_Grouch

lisyloo wrote: »

I bet that one arrived !!
Funny isn't it how when they want payment it never gets lost in the post.

That's a bit unfair, Lisyloo. I don't know the full internal workings of Budget, but I would expect their finance department to have individual letters printed for account queries rather than the batch basis that renewals are issued on. As such, the letters are likely to be issued from the office where they are generated rather than a centralised depot and, therefore, far less likely to be "missed".

I'm not trying to defend Budget here - I know how useless they are and have posted my personal views on their inability to know their backside from their funnybone. The thing is that OP wants to blame everyone apart from themself for failing to read the terms of the policy and arrange the cancellation.

magpiecottage

I think you will probably have to take the £4.70 on the chin.

On the other hand, from what you say, you have not paid anything to Budget yet and you would normally have a cooling off period which will not commence until you receive the documentation. If it never arrived then that period cannot start and, logically, cannot end either.

So I doubt very much that they would be able to make a successful claim against you or that it would be worth their while even trying.

lisyloo

That's a bit unfair, Lisyloo.

I wasn't specifically meaning Budget (sorry).
But it does seem generally that when a company wants something the letters never seem to go missing.
But cancellations from customers sometimes do.
In fact there is one gym company who report ALL cancellations missing and you need a receipt to prove you posted it (or even if you handed it in personally).
I had about 4 letters to the Halifax go missing when I wanted to transfer money out and EVEN the ones handed into the branch.
I had about 3 letter go missing to Esure when I wanted a refund for a cancellation. In the end I got someone to stand by the fax machine and wait.
Sorry for being cynical but it's y own personal experience in life and from reading these boards.
Of course not all companies are the same.

The thing is that OP wants to blame everyone apart from themself for failing to read the terms of the policy and arrange the cancellation.

I agree. The only thing I sympathise on is that it's actually not always that hard to find.
I've tried to find it in my own polcies before and quite often the bookelt says the policy MAY renew (it often depends on method of payment). So I've been unable to find it when specifically looking and had to ring them up and find out.
Because I know about it, I made sure I found out about it, but I don't think it's always that clear in some policies (no idea about Budget).