rip off RAC car insurance cancellation fees

dunstonh

We are hard working parents, not teenage joyriders!!

A premium of £1440 suggests you are higher risk. (As does another company quoting you £1600)

RAC publish their cancellation terms and you need to make sure they are complying with these.

zoecox

I can appreciate that they have to have a cancellation policy in place in order to prevent people from simply switching policies as and when they find cheaper ones. However, what I feel is unfair is that it seems as though I am being forced to cancel the policy when I don't wish to! We were completely happy with the policy up until this point. Yes, I understand that I am now deemed as higher risk as I am a new solo driver. I anticipated an increase to the policy but definitely not by such an exaggerated amount! Increase the policy by all means, could they not just increase our payments instead of making us cancel and take out a brand new policy at such a high amount? When taking it all into account they are essentially charging us around £4000 for 18 months cover!!
Also, what happens if I do not cancel the policy and then take out another one with a different insurer? If anything were to happen then surely there would be a dispute as to which insurer deals with the claim??
We asked the RAC when we first took out the policy how much it would go up by when I passed my test. We were told that yes there is a good chance it would be increased (as expected) yet, they could give no indication whatsoever as to how much by. Looking at other quotes at the time I had anticipated a rise of around £200 - £400 - kind of feel we were lead into a false sense of security!!

InsideInsurance

RAC is just a rebrand of BISL (aka Budget) who are a broker. One challenge of using brokers is that when you get a new business quote they go out to their panel of insurers and bring back the lowest priced one for you based on your criteria today. When you make a mid term adjustment however you are now locked into that one insurer and so your bound by what that particular insurer charge/ are willing to underwrite. So even more so than direct insurers you can find that MTAs are massively more expensive than a new business policy would appear to be or that the MTA isnt possible though a new business policy is.

If you werent to cancel it then you'd ultimately end up paying more as you say its £300 to cancel and £400 something to pay to the end and you would potentially have a fight between the two insurers over who's responsible to pay given both probably exclude double insurance. This ultimately would be resolved but could add significant delays.

rob_b_2000

I had a similar recent issue in this respect with Swinton Insurance. Following advice from Mikey on here I wrote to the company and the entire outstanding fee including the cancellation charge was cancelled. Ironically I still received last week a debt company chasing me although I rang and they apologised saying the demand had crossed in the post.

Morale of the story....write stating why you think it is unreasonable and try to reach am amicable agreement.

I also think Credit to the Swinton for being so reasonable is due in my particular case although there were other mitigating factors , that is a less than helpful ( bonus driven) branch manager.

Johnbbank

I've just fallen victim to the RAC cancellation fee rip off. I'm trading in my car on Monday but not taking delivery of new one until November. I would have been happy letting RAC hold balance until then but they still ripped me off for a £165 cancellation fee. I will never use them for any service again. Let the buyer beware indeed.