Quote me happy!!has any one used them before?

patman99

One thing I found-out, QMH do a hard search on your credit history as part of the quote process. This then shows on your credit history for the next 6 years.

NonGeographicalMan

channykay wrote: »

Quote me happy are great with prices but terrible with customer service. They have taken a ridiculous amount of time to respond to an issue with my NCD and left me in the dark for weeks. When I finally received a response it was selective and unhelpful.

I have sought legal advice as I think they're customer service team are refusing to accept some of my documents for personal as opposed to professional reasons and are being deliberately unhelpful.

Can't you reach deadlock with QMH on these issues and then take the matter to the Financial Services Ombudsman for adjudication?

Its high time that the Ombudsman made a ruling against the shoddy way in https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/60890863#Comment_60890863 this bucket shop subsidiary of the Aviva group is being allowed to treat its customers.

EDIT:- The Financial Services Ombudsman has this to say at http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/motor-insurance.html#4a about the administration of insurance policies (the area in which Quote Me Happy clearly performs least well)

complaints involving the administration of motor insurance policies

We deal with a significant number of complaints involving the administration of motor insurance policies. These problems may affect many insurance policies and are not unique to motor insurance. They include complaints about:

• whether information provided to the intermediary is sent to the other party to the policy;
• unexpected changes sought by a broker or intermediary;
• the insurer increasing the premium or changing the terms when the policy was renewed;
• the insurer cancelling or refusing to renew the policy.

how we decide complaints

We look at the relevant responsibilities of the policyholder, the insurer and the intermediary – and how they carried out these responsibilities.

JenW88

Their customer service is indeed appalling, well, in my case non-existent. I had an accident and phoned to report it, at the end of my description of the incident there was a long pause and then I was asked what I wanted them to do about it?!

Fortunately, the accident wasn't my fault, the woman who drove into me was insured by Zurich and they were amazing. They called 2 days after the accident to confirm their client was at fault, told me what would happen and within 20 mins of putting the phone down to them, their repairers and hire car company (I didn't have a courtesy car on my policy but they provided it!) had called me to arrange to come to my house and sort everything out, they called me all the way through the process to make sure everything was okay and I knew what was going on.

QMH made the mistake of sending me a question about their service after the accident and I told them I was unhappy with their service. They rang and emailed me so I sent them an email explaining that they'd provided no service and I wouldn't be re-insuring with them. I was told my comments had been sent to their training dept and they hoped I'd give them another chance; I'm now fighting them to get proof of NCD from them for my new insurers.

I shan't be going back and I've avoided Aviva as well on this round of insuring.

NonGeographicalMan

JenW88 wrote: »

Their customer service is indeed appalling, well, in my case non-existent. I had an accident and phoned to report it, at the end of my description of the incident there was a long pause and then I was asked what I wanted them to do about it?!

At what point in the claims process did this unhelpful QMH call centre appear to be (i.e. was it the initial claims reporting line or a secondary stage call centre involving a claims management company calling you back or alternatively you being passed on to them during the call by the first call centre)? From the experience you have outlined I could only imagine it being a call centre based in India?

I did investigate how the QMH claims process worked including what advice was given to customers by the telephone reporting line back at the end of last year and I did not find any of the problems you say you had although I did not actually make a claim. I was just investigating the process had I needed to.

The staff in the call centres I spoke to clearly worked for Aviva and were UK based although they made it clear that QMH has a different claims handling process compared to Aviva's own car insurance policy holders. If the claim did not involve another party but only damage to your own vehicle then they made clear it should be taken to Nationwide Auto Repairs by you the customer for a quote if not drivable or Natiionwide Auto Repairs would come and collect it if it was not drivable. However if the claim involved another party then the procedure would have been to refer it to a claims management company as they would first have sorted out who was at fault and claiming from the other party if they were at fault.

I would assume that if in the end the accident had involved another party and had been judged the fault of QMH's insured client that their own customer would be directed off to Nationwide Auto Repairs again but that the third party could get the repair done wherever they liked.

I have to say that the staff who took my calls on the initial QMH claims handling line were unfailingly helpful, polite and also intelligent in their approach and I did not get a "what do you expect us to do" type attitude at all. However when I was calling at the end of last year these initial claims handling line staff all confirmed they worked for Aviva in Norwich when I asked them. If the experience is as you suggest it may that QMH has now outsourced claims handling somewhere else since that time?

It will be interesting to see what happens when my insurance comes up for renewal in a few more months and whether they are £130 (40%) cheaper than anyone else in the market as before or whether having lured me in with their big fat juicy worm of a low premium they now double the renewal premium back to the level of most other companies in the marketplace for someone with my vehicle and my driver profile.

It seems strange you are also the only person to report an issue with making a claim with QMH even though there have been a lot of issues with new customers having their proof of bonus turned down (frequently without any explanation or at least good reason) and consequently their insurance policies cancelled in short order, without the customer being able to speak on the telephone to anyone at QMH about these issues.

Quentin

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

......It seems strange you are also the only person to report an issue with making a claim with QMH even though there have been a lot of issues with new customers having their proof of bonus turned down (frequently without any explanation or at least good reason) and consequently their insurance policies cancelled in short order, without the customer being able to speak on the telephone to anyone at QMH about these issues.

Those problems (getting your policy cancelled) are as bad as you ever want!

But there are reports across the net about all manner of issues with them, including claim problems.

eg. http://www.reviewcentre.com/Car-Insurance/Quotemehappy-com-www-quotemehappy-com-reviews_1475942

zeon999

Yes I have and would never use them again, they were a nightmare to give proof of no claims they kept declining due to quality or not enough info till I started making a complaint to Aviva who own Quote Me Happy.

Then I had an issue where they would not allow me to use winter tires and wer3e a total nightmare to to actually get hold of someone to discuss it with.

They were by far the cheapest and is why I chose them, I will never make the mistake of just taking the cheapest insurance again, I now always check if its easy to contact customer services and check for admin charges as these seem to be very high on cheap insurance.

NonGeographicalMan

zeon999 wrote: »

They were by far the cheapest and is why I chose them, I will never make the mistake of just taking the cheapest insurance again, I now always check if its easy to contact customer services and check for admin charges as these seem to be very high on cheap insurance.

Admiral (and its offshoots like Elephant and Bell Direct) along with MoreThan are often the next cheapest insurers on my car (something to do with my advancing years and living in a low risk postcode in the countryside). But MoreThan annoyed me after three years with them by telling me that it was compulsory to have a "voluntary" excess of £100 on my vehicle in addition to their "compulsory" excess. I told them no other insurer had ever told me I couldn't have a "voluntary excess" of zero at all even though they might encourage me to take some voluntary excess through their pricing for a £0 voluntary excess compared to other excess levels. And Admiral quoted me 70% more to auto renew with Admiral than I would have been charged for becoming a new customers with exactly the same policy terms and conditions of their Elephant brand. It therefore became a point of principle to leave them to punish them for such bad behaviour.

It does strike me that a lot of people posting here panic when they cannot speak to a customer services person and in a fit of temper about this they then cancel their policy with QMH regardless of the cost. Whereas had they persisted by using the contacts for QMH parent Aviva on the www dot ceoemail dot com website they would generally find their problems resolved whilst still hanging on to cheap car insurance.

I agree that QMH could behave better but then so could many other insurers too. For instance the one that refused to pay a claim when the car owner was swapping over with the other driver during the course of a test drive. To make out that the rest of them are all perfect and thoroughly fair compared to QMH is also not true.

CB1878

I am glad I have come across this, I work in a closely related industry and have heard reasonable things about QMH from consumers. I have to say my opinion may be changing after reading this!

zeon999

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

Admiral (and its offshoots like Elephant and Bell Direct) along with MoreThan are often the next cheapest insurers on my car (something to do with my advancing years and living in a low risk postcode in the countryside). But MoreThan annoyed me after three years with them by telling me that it was compulsory to have a "voluntary" excess of £100 on my vehicle in addition to their "compulsory" excess. I told them no other insurer had ever told me I couldn't have a "voluntary excess" of zero at all even though they might encourage me to take some voluntary excess through their pricing for a £0 voluntary excess compared to other excess levels. And Admiral quoted me 70% more to auto renew with Admiral than I would have been charged for becoming a new customers with exactly the same policy terms and conditions of their Elephant brand. It therefore became a point of principle to leave them to punish them for such bad behaviour.

It does strike me that a lot of people posting here panic when they cannot speak to a customer services person and in a fit of temper about this they then cancel their policy with QMH regardless of the cost. Whereas had they persisted by using the contacts for QMH parent Aviva on the www dot ceoemail dot com website they would generally find their problems resolved whilst still hanging on to cheap car insurance.

I agree that QMH could behave better but then so could many other insurers too. For instance the one that refused to pay a claim when the car owner was swapping over with the other driver during the course of a test drive. To make out that the rest of them are all perfect and thoroughly fair compared to QMH is also not true.

I am not saying all insurance companies except Quote Me Happy are perfect, far from it but after my experience with quote me happy would never consider using them ever again and will be much more wary about who I use in future.

As for people needing to contact Aviva, yeah that's great advise and does work, that's the only thing that resolved my issues with them in the end, but why should I have to find out who owns the company and contact them? If their customer service is so bad I have to go to so much effort it says a lot.

NonGeographicalMan

zeon999 wrote: »

As for people needing to contact Aviva, yeah that's great advise and does work, that's the only thing that resolved my issues with them in the end, but why should I have to find out who owns the company and contact them? If their customer service is so bad I have to go to so much effort it says a lot.

Although QuoteMeHappy's "Managing Director", Marco Distefano, hasn't updated his Blog page at http://blog.quotemehappy.com/news/welcome-to-quotemehappy-com-987.html for two years (so seems to have become more or less an Invisible Man compared to the public profile of most Managing Directors) I suppose anyone who really wants to who also uses Linked In could always try and contact him through his page there at:-

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marco-distefano/0/634/620

Although I suppose that firstname dot lastname @ aviva.com is likely to be simpler (don't try @quotemehappy.com or your email will bounce back).

It seems surprising that somebody who spent part of their previous business career with BT has now effectively come to the conclusion that "Talking Is A Pain In the Posterior!"

Confusingly www dot ceoemail dot com now lists Mark Wilson, as CEO of QuoteMeHappy but I think he is actually CEO of Aviva and hence presumably Marco Distefano's ultimate boss. See www.aviva.com/investor-relations/corporate-governance/board-of-directors/mark-wilson/