NAME Blacklisted for Car Insurance with Admiral Group?

GSMAnon

Have a bit of a strange problem trying to get insurance quotes with Admiral Group and am wondering if anybody else has had this problem or heard of it.

Anyway, when I try to get a quote at Elephant, I enter my details at the first page of the quote (Title, First name, Surname, D.O.B., House number, Postcode), and as soon as I click 'next' to go to the next page it comes up saying:

"Sorry, we are unable to provide you with a quote online

While we are unable to offer an online quote, we may be able to give you a quote over the telephone. Please call us on 0800 118 1644 Mon - Fri: 8am-11pm; Sat: 9am-8pm; Sun: 10am-8pm."

However, when I enter all the same details, but change my name (i.e. use my initials, or use a different name completely), it lets me proceed to the next page and obtain a quote. The same happens with price comparison websites - if I use my real name then no quote appears from Elephant, and if I use a fake name or just my initials then I get a quote from them.

I can get quotes on Admiral's website and Admiral give me quotes on price comparison websites too. HOWEVER - when I use my real name, the Admiral quote is always a lot dearer than when I use a fake name or just my initials, keeping all other details identical.

Surely you can't be discriminated against purely based on your NAME?!

I have phoned their customer service about this maybe 10 times, and they always just say I'm blocked out of the system because I've tried to get too many quotes and that they can reset the system by changing my 'password', and they then proceed to change that password - but it never changes things, and I'm always blocked out. Anyway, I don't see how that could help since you don't NEED a password to start a quote on the Elephant website, and for the rest of the Admiral companies, I can GET a quote, it's just that using my real name adds several hundred quid to the premium.

There is no reason for my name to be blacklisted. I've never been refused insurance before, I have no previous claims or convictions, I have a clean licence, and have even been a customer to Admiral before on a previous car just last year!

Anybody have any ideas? Anybody have any suggestions as to who I should contact to resolve this? Customer service is always absolutely useless about it.

It's annoying too because Admiral/Elephant always seem to provide me with the cheapest quotes when I use the false name.

Another thing to note is that I noticed that this only started happening after the Admiral Group searched my credit report. Before that date I could get quotes fine, and afterwards my quotes had changed. My credit report is good, however, so I don't see what difference that should make. In addition, a credit report should have no bearing whatsoever if I happened to want to pay my insurance annually and not in monthly instalments, which is indeed what I would like to do.

Derivative

Do you have a name containing expletives or something that may be construed as such?

A few of my friends have had trouble signing up for a fair few things on the Internet using names like "Peacock" and "Dickens". Ridiculous, to be sure, but not something to count out?

GSMAnon

EdgEy wrote: »

Do you have a name containing expletives or something that may be construed as such?

A few of my friends have had trouble signing up for a fair few things on the Internet using names like "Peacock" and "Dickens". Ridiculous, to be sure, but not something to count out?

Err, no not really.

Even if that was the case it wouldn't explain why I could get quotes at Bell, Diamond and Admiral, but not Elephant (they're all sister companies in the Admiral Group). Only Elephant doesn't provide quotes, the other 3 just increase the premium when I use my real name - are you suggesting that people with unfortunate names need to pay more for insurance :P? Additionally, it wouldn't explain why I was able to get quotes up until November 9th (when they conducted the credit search on me), but not afterwards.

I'm convinced it's something to do with them having checked my credit report. But as I said my credit report isn't bad, and even if it was, I pay my insurance annually and not in regular installments, so a credit report should be irrelevant.

MattLFC

Does it actually really matter?? In my experience all the EUI companies pretty much mirror each others prices, within a couple of pound, with Admiral usually being the cheapest.

I think you're probably wasting your time phoning them and moaning about it on here, as it sounds like theres no way to get it rectified, and if you really want to go with EUI, you still have multiple options available to you.

As a sidenote, when I renewed my Quinn Direct insurance policy last year, they had to delete all my previous quotations (23 in total for different cars I had been looking at - you get the quotes for prospective new cars online within a matter of seconds just by typing in the reg and it assumes the rest of the details remain the same) before their system would let me take out the renewal lol. The girl found it amusing I had so many quotations on the system. I explained I was male and always looking for something faster, and she then understood lol.

GSMAnon

MattLFC wrote: »

Does it actually really matter?? In my experience all the EUI companies pretty much mirror each others prices, within a couple of pound, with Admiral usually being the cheapest.

I think you're probably wasting your time phoning them and moaning about it on here, as it sounds like theres no way to get it rectified, and if you really want to go with EUI, you still have multiple options available to you.

As a sidenote, when I renewed my Quinn Direct insurance policy last year, they had to delete all my previous quotations (23 in total for different cars I had been looking at - you get the quotes for prospective new cars online within a matter of seconds just by typing in the reg and it assumes the rest of the details remain the same) before their system would let me take out the renewal lol. The girl found it amusing I had so many quotations on the system. I explained I was male and always looking for something faster, and she then understood lol.

Well it does matter because Admiral Group insurers all give me the best quotes when I use just my initials or a false name, and the difference between them and the next lowest insurer is often several hundred pounds.

In addition, Elephant (for some reason) do usually offer me slightly better deals than Admrial, Bell, Diamond, etc, with the difference between them often being up to £150.

There must surely be some way to get it rectified. It can't be legal, surely, to offer me a vastly higher quote (or no quote at all) based entirely on my NAME, and nothing else?

Quentin

Maybe your history of getting lots of quotes from them has caused this (have you "played around" with the facts in any of these quotes eg to see what difference declaring points/incidents makes etc)

cotleigh

Maybe a credit check DOES make a difference to insurance quotes, if the person has a credit report indicating money worries, because a person with debt problems may be seen as a higher risk of making an inflated or fraudulent claim.

It is like the way that having CCJs or debt issues rules you out of applying for jobs involving looking after ther people's money.

GSMAnon

Quentin wrote: »

Maybe your history of getting lots of quotes from them has caused this (have you "played around" with the facts in any of these quotes eg to see what difference declaring points/incidents makes etc)

I've played around with details like which named drivers to put on the policy, how to describe my work (there are like 5/6 different terms that correctly describe my work), different cars (obviously) and different trim levels of the same car.

I have also on occasion changed my date of birth to see how my policy would reduce as I aged, and did the same with some of the named drivers.

I don't have any points and have never had an accident or made a claim, so I've never had to play around with details like that.

Quentin

GSMAnon wrote: »

....I have also on occasion changed my date of birth to see how my policy would reduce as I aged, and did the same with some of the named drivers.....

I guess that could be the problem. (When you input details you do agree they are the truth (messing with drivers d-o-b would flag up as being false).

In future do your virtual quotes anonymously!

GSMAnon

cotleigh wrote: »

Maybe a credit check DOES make a difference to insurance quotes, if the person has a credit report indicating money worries, because a person with debt problems may be seen as a higher risk of making an inflated or fraudulent claim.

It is like the way that having CCJs or debt issues rules you out of applying for jobs involving looking after ther people's money.

I don't have any money worries. No CCJs, no CIFAs, no GAINs.

As far as credit accounts go I only have 4, one of which is settled (an old mobile phone account). Of my active accounts I have one mobile phone account, a £950 limit credit card which is £10 in credit (almost never use it), and a £2,500 interest-free overdraft on my current account, and at this current point in time I'm about -£190 into it, but will have it paid off and cleared by February or sooner.

The only thing that might have been off about my credit report around the time that they checked is that I wasn't confirmed on the electoral role at my current address due to the fact that I moved in here during the annual canvas period, but the system has been updated this month and all is fine.

There is absolutely nothing on my credit report to suggest that I'm in any serious debt, have a history of fraud or financial difficulties, or am in any way likely to become fraudulent or get into financial difficulties.

GSMAnon

Quentin wrote: »

I guess that could be the problem. (When you input details you do agree they are the truth (messing with drivers d-o-b would flag up as being false).

In future do your virtual quotes anonymously!

Quite possibly. What could I do to rectify the situation?