Forgot to renew insurance - where do I stand?

Micklewhite

Wise words King_Nothing. Thanks to everyone who offered advice!

darich

This is quite an unusual thread given the number of other threads that are started by people who claim they were scammed by their insurance because the policy was automatically renewed.

Maybe we should all bookmark this thread and post on the next thread where someone claims to have been conned by their insurance when it auto-renewed and point out that this is the type of problem that can occur.

To the OP - are you sure the policy didn't autorenew? It seems that most companies do this nowadays and I'd have thought your company is very much in the minority if it didn't.

Hope you get a good solution

moaninggit

to much thought going in to this
1 have the insurance company asked about the gap no> Insure the car and move on.
yes>the car has been on the drive/ in the garage for 6 months, who is to say otherwise.If you admit it whats to stop bored insurance employe forwarding your written to confession to PC Plod.

Quentin

Selden wrote: »

It is certainly not wise to lie when effecting an insurance policy, which is, of course, a contract of the utmost good faith. If you do so, you are effectively embedding into the policy a ground on which the insurer can walk away from any liability it has to you, possibly even some years in the future. Should it be obliged to pay out to a third party, it will seek to recover its outlay from you. At worst this may mean your financial ruin. The law will be dead against you, and the FOS will not assist anyone who acts deliberately in this way.

Posts like "at worst this may mean your financial ruin" are just scaremongering as far as this issue goes.

Insurance companies are happy to take "old" NCD - presumably because they get the business of drivers who for whatever reason didn't use the old NCD.

The OP has got away with inadvertently driving without insurance, and how do you see any insurer now making any issue of the car being off the road/not required for the last 6 months? Clearly no-one has to incriminate themselves and admit to the offence!

Quentin

Your example is quite different. Insurance proposal forms ask about convictions, so Ms Barber should have disclosed hers.

They do not ask if you have "got away" with anything (that can never be subsequently proven)! Endof.

darich

I can see Selden's point but likewise I think Quentin makes good points too.

Personally, I think I'd be inclined to state quite truthfully, I had no insurance for the 6months. Quentin is right in that since the OP was never caught for having no insurance, there is no conviction or criminal record so the OP can truthfully state "no" in that particular box. However, by stating there was no car/it was off road/any other lie means that strictly speaking the insurance could be voided if the insurer found out it was a lie.

I'm not advocating lying if you can get away with it but how can the insurer ever find out if the OP was driving for a certain period, where there are no parking tickets, speeding fines, criminal convictions or anything relating to motoring. It's unlikely the OP claims mileage for work since employer may well be looking for copies of insurance certficates. I know mine does.
So there was no SORN notice. Maybe the OP forgot/didn't know that you could claim road tax back or not tax a car. No SORN doesn't mean a car was definitely on the road is the point I'm making.

It also begs the question, in the event of a large payout, does every insurer assume every answer from every policy holder to be untruthful and send a private investigator to find out?

If the OP states there was no car insurance hence the gap, it's not a lie. Is the insurer likely to ask why and potentially spend more checking?
The other thing is, that this only becomes an issue if the OP has to make a claim. If the policy is started and runs for a year, an extra year's NCD is earned and another search on confused.com means an other policy and so on. Then the NCD will be continuous.

Evilm

Similar to Darich above how about "I held no insurance policy in my name for that six months"?

Hopefully they won't ask who did hold insurance on the car during that time.

Quentin

Selden wrote: »

Do you accept that driving without insurance for six months is a material fact and should, as a matter of law, be disclosed regardless of whether or not questions are asked?

No I don't.

How many of us have broken the law today and got away with it?

Do you think we should all (as a matter of law) contact our insurers tomorrow and tell them we've been speeding/jumping the lights/doing u turns where they are prohibited etc etc??

vaio

[FONT=&quot]

Selden wrote: »

Do you accept that driving without insurance for six months is a material fact and should, as a matter of law, be disclosed regardless of whether or not questions are asked?.......

I thought that the FOS had ruled that it's not for policy holders to try and guess what an insurer considers to be a material fact, the onus is on the insurance company to "ask clear and unambiguous" questions on anything they consider to be a material fact.[/FONT]

Quentin

You clearly don't understand either the laws about self incrimination, or common sense!

According to your view, it seems we should contact our motor insurer to disclose every time we exceed the speed limit etc.