Auto renewal who has been caught out

keith1950

Hi, I may be missing your point but you say the Swiftcover renewal was not missed, so when you received the documents at the previous renewal or inception or whenever, if you have read them thoroughly, as you would do with any legal agreement, you would have seen the reference to auto renewal and knowing that would anticipate it at renewal. This all comes back to my point about paying attention to detail.You cannot always assume that by renewing nothing has changed, you have to check!

dunstonh

The Swiftcover renewal letter was not missed, because I sought new quotes each year, so it was of no interest what they wanted.

For clarification, what you are saying is that you got the renewal letter and decided to ignore what it said?

if you have read them thoroughly,

You dont need to read them thoroughly. The "what to do next" bit is not hidden away. Its in the main letter which is normally one or two sides of A4. Not hidden away in the other papers.

Inactive

darich wrote: »

Surely the bold words don't really belong together???
if it's legal it's not really a rip off....besides, you have a choice to go elsewhere quite easily.

Why they don't offer loyalty incentives???....the answer is in this thread.

They do in my book, it is a rip off that the insurance companies and others have managed to persuade successive governments to make legal, however that does not mean that customers are not being ripped off.

I never mentioned " loyalty incentives " all I am suggesting is that insurers treat their existing customers fairly and exactly the same as new customers.

birkee

keith1950 wrote: »

Hi, I may be missing your point but you say the Swiftcover renewal was not missed, so when you received the documents at the previous renewal or inception or whenever, if you have read them thoroughly, as you would do with any legal agreement, you would have seen the reference to auto renewal and knowing that would anticipate it at renewal. This all comes back to my point about paying attention to detail.You cannot always assume that by renewing nothing has changed, you have to check![/QUOTE]

Same resposibility on the insurer regarding the insured?
Or are they hoping changes will have occurred, so they need not pay out if a claim is made? Who the heck thinks to notify their car insurer that they got married last month even if it would mean their insurance decreased?

Swiftcover is an on-line company, and you print out your own documents. Does the insured have a printer? Is it good enough that you can read the small print on the print out? If you don't have a printer, are you supposed to remember all the small print by reading it off the screen?
If you've had 40+ years of motor insurance, with the usual T&C, and before you've ever heard the term 'auto renewal', why would you search the small print looking for something that had never existed before? I would expect this to be in BOLD somewhere.

keith1950

I would always check new documents to ensure that the details are correct and in doing so I would see whether auto renewal is applicable or not. In my experience it has never been hidden in the small print but has been quite prominent . On the subject of Swiftcover, although they are owned by AXA they are one of the few companies I would never use. Considering that they are totally online and the customer has to have a printer there a lot of post offices that will not accept Swiftcover print-outs and they have notices up to that effect. Definately one to steer clear of.

darich

Inactive wrote: »

They do in my book, it is a rip off that the insurance companies and others have managed to persuade successive governments to make legal, however that does not mean that customers are not being ripped off.

I never mentioned " loyalty incentives " all I am suggesting is that insurers treat their existing customers fairly and exactly the same as new customers.

Whether the words are suitable for use together is really irrelevant.

The point is no one is EVER forced to accept any price quoted by an insurance company.
If an policy holder receives a renewal notice and does not act upon it, then the ts and cs that they signed up to state the policy will be renewed.

Like I said - it's not compulsory, it's not forced, it's not encouraged and it's not sneaky.
Those who don't read what they sign up to or fail to renew their insurance due to forgetfulness should be thankful to the insurer for keeping them legal.

I still fail to see how any one can have a go at an insurance company for doing something they were told was going to happen almost a year earlier.

mikey72

From another post

"I now receive a letter redirected from my old address stating that I owe you £400.00 plus, as a fee to cancel! I have since also obtained all letters from Kwik Fit insurance reference the renewal etc. Prior to getting these letters I had no idea that my policy would be automatically renewed. I never was told any such thing when I took the policy out in 2009. When I took the policy out I never received any letters at all as the schedule and certificate of insurance was sent via email.
I now receive letters from the debt collectors to pay 500 pounds "


And what do the t&c's actually state?

"We won’t automatically renew your policies if your payment does not authorise. "

So, no problem with that then.
Not.

So whether you read them or not doesn't matter, as the insurance company appears not to read them either.

starrystarry

mikey72 wrote: »

No you haven't

You've had a price to renew.
You've shopped around.
You've had alternative quotes.
You have decided to insure with the same company this time.
That's absolutely the same system as any insurance policy you decide to purchase on a 12 month basis, and decide who to insure with.

Auto-renew - give them your bank details.
Stay insured without any further actions, your account will be automatically debited, and then when you die, your estate will be debited.

You've lost me now. I gave you examples of when the auto renew system has worked for me, whether it meant I stayed with the same company or not. How am I being hypocritical? Are you saying that the only way I can prove I agree with auto renewing is to never shop around? Ever? To trust that the renewal quote I've been given is the best deal available? I don't think that is the purpose of auto renew and anyone that did that would clearly be an idiot.

theJudge

mikey72 wrote: »

From another post

"I now receive a letter redirected from my old address stating that I owe you £400.00 plus, as a fee to cancel! I have since also obtained all letters from Kwik Fit insurance reference the renewal etc. Prior to getting these letters I had no idea that my policy would be automatically renewed. I never was told any such thing when I took the policy out in 2009. When I took the policy out I never received any letters at all as the schedule and certificate of insurance was sent via email.
I now receive letters from the debt collectors to pay 500 pounds "


And what do the t&c's actually state?

"We won’t automatically renew your policies if your payment does not authorise. "

So, no problem with that then.
Not.

So whether you read them or not doesn't matter, as the insurance company appears not to read them either.

Hi mikey, with your particular problem, if the small print says they won't automatically renew your policies if your payment does not authorise" then just send it to the debt collection agency and insurer. They can't pursue something which is legally unenforceable. If they put an outstanding debt on your credit entry dispute it with experian or equifax.

theJudge

keith1950 wrote: »

Hi, theJudge, I now never use comparison sites and get quotes direct from the insurer and have had quotes up to 3 months before renewal although some are only 2 months and most 28 days or so. Why don't you start a campaign to stop auto renewal -I will sign up to it, however taking things as they are, it is always best to be aware of possible problems and ensure that things don't go wrong. Yes some posters on here do appear to have legitimate issues but a lot are just ostriches with their heads in the sand who then kick off when things go wrong due to their own actions or non action.

Keith, I think the main problem the insurance industry has is that there are a lot of policyholders who've suffered problems during the claims process, coupled with the fact that insurers lobbied the Tory government in 1987 to prevent an enactment of a new insurance law which would have prevented insurers from avoiding claims where information irrelevant to the claim in hand hadn't been declared and also to pursue claims for damages against insurers who unlawfully avoided the claim or caused delays to the claim which incurred the claimant costs. At that time, the Tory government said that they were happy with insurers signing up to a code of practise. Since then, we've moved from self-regulation to FSA regulation but there is still no back up from the courts. The law commission has pushed for an insurance law again but this won't become a draft bill until 2013. Until then, if you take out an insurance policy, the law says that the insurers must restore the policyholder to the state that they were in before the incident but if they don't, the policyholder can only force the insurer to do this via the courts, he can't pursue damages. So, for example, if your house burns down, and the insurers refuse to pay out, it could take a couple of years before you can bring the case to court. The insurers would then have to rebuild your house assuming you win, but they wouldn't have to pay for alternative accommodation or loss of employment, say, caused by their delay/avoidance. Until that changes, in my mind my insurance policy is a guarantee of nothing.

I'm against auto-renewal because consumers should have to opt-in to any transaction which they are paying for whenever they have to pay, and at the point of opt-in what they're signing up for should be made clear not hidden away in small print. So, you can't say because auto-renewal was buried away in the t&cs when the policyholder first signed up that they opted in to it, for example.

In terms of the policies themselves, the cheaper the policy the more exclusions there are. In my recent insurance claim, the insurer tried to foist a cowboy builder on to me. When they told me they had no other builder on their books who covered my postcode, they then told me that they wouldn't pay for my time spent creating a spec of works or managing the build as their t&cs state that I should offer any assistance they desire at my own expense. Those terms are obviously unfair and the FSA are supposed to enforce this as part of the law which originated from an EU directive. When I contacted the FSA, they gave their usual spin of saying that they may or may not investigate this unfair term but woud not tell me unless they got to the point of enforcement. I'm raising this once again with the EU commission as the directive requires UK regulatory authorities to take action if a problem has collective harm to consumers, so they cannot hide behind the Enterprise Act 2002 to say that consumers are not entitled to know what regulatory companies are doing about rogue companies.

On that point, which demonstrates just how corrupt politicians have become in this country. MPs are elected by their constituents. The majority of constituent would obviously like to know who the rogue traders are out there. Yet successive governments have failed to pass laws to disclose the market information that the authorities possess. The Enterprise Act 2002 specifically forbids this information to be disclosed and makes it a criminal offence to do so. Why would MPs do this? Because they care more about companies than their constituents.