insurance increase, can they do this ?

shawie60

Hi guys forgive me if I'm not in the right forum but i cant find one specificaly or my problem .. which is, in may, my wife had an accident in which the other party assumed liability. We finally got everything sorted (car repaired ) and dusted or so we thought. We then sold the car ( mini ) and got a more economical model Suzuki Alto 1 litre. When we enquired if the insurance ( from One Call ) would be cheaper we were told no. Because we only had 3-4 payments left with this company and propose to move when the insurance needs renewing we thought we'd leave it and not create a fuss.
This morning we recieved a letter telling us our car insurance was increasing from £55 a month to £93 !! which we think is taking the p*ss somewhat seeing as the fault wasnt our in the first place and we now have a more economical car.. Are they legally allowed to do this and is there anything we can do ??
any advice or help appreciated ..
many thanks
glenn

bigjl.

They can do as they please since you changed the car mid was through policy.

Are you sure you weren't found to be at fault in anyway?

shawie60

bigjl. wrote: »

They can do as they please since you changed the car mid was through policy.

Are you sure you weren't found to be at fault in anyway?

no my wife has recieved physio from the claim due to a back and knee injury and is awaitng compensation to ..

mikey72

It's going to be cheaper when you shop around for renewal.

Ask them for a full breakdown of the increase.

There may be a fee of up to £50 for admin, and as you are stuck with them, they'll charge as much as they can for the new policy, but not so much you'll cancel, lose a years ncd, and still have to pay a cancellation fee.
So if it's three payments left, you've been stung for £114.
So nearly half of that could be admin, the rest could be the change in premium.

InsideInsurance

One Call receive a lot of bad feedback in the Insurance section of this site (along with a number of other insurers/ brokers).

Your going to have a high admin fee involved for one which could easily be half the total increase costs, secondly, until the claim is settled some insurers count all open claims the same as fault because until the moneys in the bank you never know 100% that it will be settled even if liability is agreed.

Both the broker and insurer can certainly do this.

It may be worth looking at fees when you switch next year as it is getting increasingly common that brokers & insurers are slashing initial premiums to get higher in the Aggregators listings but then clawing back the lost money with high admin fees etc.

catflea

I had a great deal of fun and games when I had a false claim made against me.

At the point that the claim was dropped my insurer changed it from an "at fault" to a "not at fault" and then charged me £20 a month extra! Apparently being in a non fault accident increases your risk of being in an at fault accident - I can't get my head around that though....

I managed then to get it removed from my insurance record entirely.