Carphone warehouse insurance

mingmong0070

Hi I took a new phone contract out with CPW in 2004 cant remember if I signed in store or bought over the phone!

However I recieved a copy of my bank statements dating back to 2001, i was checking through when I discovered payments to CPW for £7.41 starting in December 2004.

Regular payments were made every month until February 2007!!!
I can only assume it was for phone insurance!!

I have never asked for phone insurance at all throughout my phone contract history.

Then I discovered an article online
How CPW had been hit for £240,000 insurance misselling!!
looks like ive been scammed!!
Any ideas how to take them on re some compo? Or have any of you guys had the same issues?

cheers.

grumbler

mingmong0070 wrote: »

Then I discovered an article online
How CPW had been hit for £240,000 insurance misselling!!

What article?

Or have any of you guys had the same issues?

Everyone buying a phone from CPW and subsidiaries gets 1 month free insurance that can be cancelled at any time. The paperwork clearly says this. I guess the majority here have a habit of checking the paperwork and the bank statements.

mingmong0070

cant post web links but google

carphone ware house fine for miss selling bbc news



Carphone Warehouse fined £245,000
The FSA accused Carphone Warehouse of hiding its mis-selling
The customers were not sent a "statement of demands and needs", which would have shown them why they were being recommended the insurance,

Of these customers, 56,000 were not even sent their policy summaries setting out the key points in the cover, such as its main features and benefits.
The FSA discovered that some of the firm's salesmen, the UK's biggest seller of mobile phones, did not have any administrative mechanism for sending out the policies.
"The Carphone Warehouse Ltd failed its telephone sales consumers by not giving them all the information necessary for them properly to understand the insurance product they had bought," said Sarah Wilson, director of retail firms at the FSA.
"Customers were therefore exposed to the risk of being left with an insurance policy which was unnecessary or provided incomplete cover leading to rejected claims. "In either case they could suffer some degree of financial loss."


I diddn't get any documents!!

grumbler

Well, I must admit that I have never bought anything in-store and know only about online purchases.

gjchester

mingmong0070 wrote: »

looks like ive been scammed!!
Any ideas how to take them on re some compo? Or have any of you guys had the same issues?

cheers.

Maybe or you agreed to insurance and then forgot about it.

You can't remember how you bought the phone you'd have little change claiming you remember if you agreed or not for insurance.

Around that time many places gave you a months free insurance and then you had to cancel the policy by phone, you may have agreed to this trial then never cancelled it.

The mis selling claims at the moment are mainly for cases where the insurance was invalid form the start, say if you were over 65 or self employed, You had the benefit of coverage, even if you did not use it.


Write to CPW and state your case, but try not to put anythingin that leads to doubt, so where you can't remember a part try not to put it in the letter.

mingmong0070

I have never asked for phone insurance at all throughout my phone contract history.

As stated in my first post, the fact that I have never received the paper work. Yes admittedly I was not the best at keeping records.
I will write a letter requesting all data held on me including the £10 fee

gjchester

mingmong0070 wrote: »

I have never asked for phone insurance at all throughout my phone contract history.

As stated in my first post, the fact that I have never received the paper work. Yes admittedly I was not the best at keeping records.
I will write a letter requesting all data held on me including the £10 fee

As Grumbler says you *AUTOMATICALLY* get a months insurance unless they opt out at time of purchase. It's up to you to cancel it.

It's an underhand way of doing this but that's not mis selling. Not sending documents maybe if you fell in to a category where you were sold insurance that can never be claimed on (ie age or self employed).

grumbler

gjchester wrote: »

... Not sending documents maybe if you fell in to a category where you were sold insurance that can never be claimed on (ie age or self employed).

Is it not exactly what is called 'misselling'? I don't see how this can be the case for a mobile phone insurance, but in the quote above FSA accused CPW of misselling because CPW failed to send the summaries setting out the key points in the cover.

gjchester

grumbler wrote: »

Is it not exactly what is called 'misselling'? I don't see how this can be the case for a mobile phone insurance, but in the quote above FSA accused CPW of misselling because CPW failed to send the summaries setting out the key points in the cover.

Sorry should have been a biit clearer should have put in this case on it.


The OP said

"Hi I took a new phone contract out with CPW in 2004 cant remember if I signed in store or bought over the phone!"


The BBC reports (which was in 2006!)
"The problem stemmed from the way the company sold insurance over the telephone between January and October during 2005."

The OP's *may* have bought it instore and said the insurance started in Dec 2004, so as you get a "free" month that means october or november 2004 for the contract depending on billing cycles. It's not in the timeframe CPW had been fined for, that doesn't mean it's not mis selling but it's out of the windows for the FSA response so not so clear cut.

It may be they did send policies out outside that timeframe, maybe they changed providers at the start of 2005 and that caused the issue, or how they gave the info out. Maybe prior to that it was a pack insert in store they gave out, who knows.

However thats not reported anywhere, only the dates and reasons for the fine.

gjchester

mingmong0070 wrote: »

However I recieved a copy of my bank statements dating back to 2001, i was checking through when I discovered payments to CPW for £7.41 starting in December 2004.

Regular payments were made every month until February 2007!!!
I can only assume it was for phone insurance!!

Why did you not query it at the time? If you had not taken insurance didn't it occur to you to look into this?

mingmong0070

gjchester wrote: »

Why did you not query it at the time? If you had not taken insurance didn't it occur to you to look into this?

Like I said not the best checker of statements at that time, the fact remains I was not told about any insurance provided by Cpw free or otherwise, I have no records of any policy! The payments suddenly stop in 2007!! I did not cancel anything! So the question remains why did payments debit my account then stop within 3yr period?
Seems to coincide with poor sales practises as reported by the FSA during this time.
I will get to the bottom of this requested direct debit mandate from my bank re the payments.