Car insurance No Claims unfairness

mispeltyoof

I have 35 years NCB. Like many others I change insurers every few years to get the best quote. I have just insured with the Caravan Club. Who qouted me a competitive price. I was asked to provide proof of no claims entitlement from the RAC (not had to do this for years!). The RAC has a maximum NCB of 7 years. I sent this to the Cravan Club who issued the policy. They now tell me that as their Max is 9years and the RAC is 7 then I owe them £53 extra because in their eyes I only have 7 years and not 35years. I am in an impossible situation because although a national data base will show I havnt claimed in 35years unless I can contact my last insurers (impossible) I now have only 7years NCB.
This is a ridiculous catch 22 situation and the Caravan Club has effectively put up their quote by £53 AFTER issuing the policy.
Also my excellent insurance record has just been cancelled out for no valid reason.
I intend to go to the ombudsman,anything else I can do? If I simply cancel the policy (its now after 14 days) they will charge me virtually the £50 to cancel.

alistair.long

show some previous no claims (that show more then 9) if you have them or the letter which you received showing how much no claims you had.

katsu

Ask RAC to write you a letter confirming the amount of NCB that you had when you joined them from your previous insurer. We got something like that done by an insurer once, but not RAC.

mikey72

Was it an online quote.
If it was, check the difference online.
I swop every year, and the loss of no-claims usually makes less than £10 difference to me, easily outweighed by the savings.

silvercar

I had the same problem. The joke was that I was going back to an insurer that I had been with 2 years previously. You would have thought that with 7 years NCD 2 years ago, from the same insurer, plus no claims to declare in the last 3 years, it wouldn't take rocket science to work out I had at least 9 years NCD. They wouldn't accept it. As it happens the difference in price was under a fiver, so not worth making a stink but it is something to bear in mind.

Perhaps another question to asl is "how long NCD do you tally?"

dunstonh

I intend to go to the ombudsman,anything else I can do?

The ombudsman will not have any remit to tell companies what NCB they have to offer.

If I simply cancel the policy (its now after 14 days) they will charge me virtually the £50 to cancel.

No wrong doing there.

Seeing as you haven't kept a record of your NCB, you can go back to your previous insurer to that and ask them for proof of no claims whilst you were with them.

It is important if you DIY that you keep these records and check what level of no claims history the insurer offers.

keith1950

Hi, as dunstonh says, write to your previous insurer , they should be able to give you written proof of your NCB when you went to them. With respect to your 35 years , anything over 9 years will make little or no difference to your premium. Most insurers give somewhere between 60% and 70% for 5 years and roughly 1%/year extra after that up to a max of about 75%. Some like AXA claim to give up to 90% but even with that level of NCB their premiums appear to be a lot higher than some that only give 60%.

sanfly

keith1950 wrote: »

write to your previous insurer , they should be able to give you written proof of your NCB when you went to them.

Not strictly true in all cases, have just joined Saga Motor ins, they only required me to send in my NCD proof if i had a claim, however due to various threads on here re NCD confusion, i spoke to them to query NCD at renewal.

It seems at renewal they would only declare 4 years NCD their maximum to me and any other insurer, however if i sent in my proof of NCD now they would update my file to the running total of NCD, which is what will be declared if i change to another insurer at renewal.

So beware if you choose Saga and some others for all i know.