Adding driver to policy?

thegirlintheattic

Not having a good day today.

My Dad added me to his car insurance policy for the last month of it. The company on the phone only asked for my name, DOB and license type nothing about claims or occupation. Dad paid extra premium and set the policy to renew at the start of September.

He recieved the policy documents which had me listed as a student and no claims (supposedly because I was already on their database?). Dad called up said that's not right, can we change it and pay the new premium. Company says that because he has renewed the policy the old policy is now closed so no changes can be made. They confirmed that they had listened to the phone call recording and that they made the mistake by not asking for the details on the phone but reiterated that because the policy is closed they cannot do anything but removed me as a named driver and refund his premium. They do not do temporary drivers either.

Fair enough he has his money back and whilst it is inconvienant not to have two drivers for an upcoming long journey it's not a massive problem. Just wanted to check two things:

1) Can companies really just get prior insurance details up on a database and not check these?! This is a company that I have never been insured with before nor been a named driver with them, although I was on my Dad's insurance years ago with another company.

2) Once a policy is renewed does that really mean the current policy details cannot be edited?

hcb42

1) no, but they already said they made an error. THey are only human - well some of them are lol

2), no, it can be amended, what if you changed jobs etc? However they do not have to continue to accept the risk e.g higher rated vehicle, new postcode or higher rated job.

thegirlintheattic

Thanks hcb42. With 1, what is weird is they have my occupation down as undergrad student which I have not been for over two years now so we were wondering where that information came from.

They must just be a strange company as with 2, they said they could add me as a named driver to the renewed policy that kicks in the start of September so accepting the higher risk but not for the last two weeks or so of the currently policy because it is 'closed'. Very funny business. Oh well.