Avoid these insurers like the plague....

digannio

Yeah, I'm sure you've read them all carefully but thanks for helping to keep this near the top so it can go before as big an audience as possible.

Quentin

As all this is self inflicted, your rant should be along the lines of "look what happens to you if you don't read your letters", not my insurers "attitude stinks".

Then it would be helpful!

(There is a separate place here for ranting! http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=82)

digannio

Quentin, you might think you're the MB police but as I see it this board is to discuss insurance matters, companies, policies, how customers are dealt with by them and problems people encounter along the way. The way companies and their staff handle customers forms part of that. I have explained my story, what happened and the attitude that came across as well as relaying the views of many others in relation to Budget.
If you're not interested in this, then you know where the door out of the thread is.

Quentin

You and 6 others have contributed to this thread.

All the 6 have tried to point out you are wrong over this. Can you see a pattern emeging?

Or are you just an out and out troll?

digannio

If you ever get sick of 24/7 on here, I know just the company that would suit. But thanks again for keeping this at the top.

peterbaker

What are you people on when you worship at the altar of "auto-renewal"??? :rotfl:

I am watching a re-run of Logan's Run at the moment. It strikes me that most of you would be clapping and cheering at Carousel also

BISL are an example of a creeping cancer. You go to HSBC and buy insurance ... you end up paying another middle man (BISL). You go to Barclays ... you get a 20% different quote ... same middleman. Neither of them make it very clear what BISL have to do with it.

Personal insurance like householder's and personal motor used to be annually renewable, paid in advance. Those of us who worked in insurance knew that once a year there was a period when we could lose our customers if they found a better deal. Then it became possible to pay by instalments. Then by monthly direct debit. For maybe 10 years this made little difference to the annual contract. If you stopped paying a direct debit then you would be chased for the difference. Most customers knew where they stood.

Eventually a class of customer who did not know where they stood started making life difficult for insurers by stopping their DD, going elsewhere on a cheaper deal and inviting the old insurers to do their worst. The insurers got fed up with trying although they still wrote the letters.

By this time the concept of "panel insurers" and "introducer affinity schemes" was going through a kind of renewal and banks started trying their luck.

Banks especially started telling customers that they could change insurers mid-term. It was a ruthless tactic employed because they wished to grow "market share" quickly. From their point of view of course it soon had to be modified because they succeeded in creating a hugely disloyal market.

BISL have become more evident in the last two or three years. I have had quotes from them via different banks, yet I was unaware of their introduction of a sticky "autorenewal obligation". Why would I be aware? I mean I am only a experienced insurance dinosaur.

What is under discussion is clearly an unfair contract term designed solely for inertia selling under the false banner of consumer protection.

Just because changes are implemented doesn't mean they are unassailable truths. They are merely jolly wheezes employed by unscrupulous product developers and their paymasters.

dunstonh

What are you people on when you worship at the altar of "auto-renewal"???

Whether you like auto-renewal or not (and I am not a fan) it doesnt make it an excuse for people not to read their renewal letters and then blame the insurer for their own error.

peterbaker

Well dunston, as I have said, despite having had two BISL quotes via two different banks and having considered them, I was not aware of this new concept, and I easily have the experience to assimilate anything which is market norm / public knowledge when it comes to insurance.

Many times you and I have crossed swords about new wheezes and many times you have accused me of missing the point or refusing to accept some new norm.

An example is reattribution of inherited estates in With Profits Funds (otherwise known by people like me as daylight robbery). This week I got a letter that implies perhaps that next year I and maybe 150,000 other "stick in the muds" in the AXA Sun Life Old With Profits Fund might be assessed for a share of £1 billion because we remain inconvenient beneficiaries in the way of someone's master plan to sell off the funds to that wonderful wheezer of all wheezes, Revolution.

I didn't take a £400 bribe in 2001 to get out of the way of "progress". I am still in the way because I have views about what's right. Most of what is right in western insurance markets was thrashed out over nearly 250 years of good practice following a 100 years of development from scratch. I reckon that most of what is wrong was developed in less than a generation, you see .

I therefore assert that the term is clearly an unfair contract term designed solely for inertia selling under the false banner of consumer protection.

huckster

My understanding is that when you sign up to a policy, under FSA rules the Insurance sales person has to inform you that auto-renewal is possible and that this is also contained in the policy documents. This comes under the FSA rules where a payment type is given, that could give rise to continuation beyond the first contract period, due to the auto-renewal.

Where the rules don't go far enough in my opinion, is that the Insurers should advise the customer that the auto-renewal function can be switched off if required.

If people don't like auto-renewal, ask your Insurers to switch this off. The renewal will then be received, asking you to provide your instructions if you want to renew. If you are planning a holiday at the time of renewal, just remember that you have done this, as otherwise you could end up driving your car out from the airport car park without Insurance.

hornpipe

Regardless of all the auto-renewal smokescreen, BISL are a b awful company to deal with and should be avoided like the terminal rash that they are developing into.
h