Admiral Car Insurance Con?

maz10_2

Hi, first post. Insurance with Admiral expired but as I no longer had the car I neither needed or required insurance (been previously scrapped), I forgot about the insurance reminder, busy with other things etc. Anyway then Admiral write saying they tried to collect money from my bank but were denied, good I thought, cheeky blighters, not my original thoughts but the cleaned up version. Anyway they then send me a letter stating they have cancelled the policy for non-payment but issued me with a bill for the period upon which they claim to have insured me for. As Ive been away on holiday this has now been passed to a debt collection agency. What an absolutely disgusting way to do business. I'm in the process of sending letters to Admiral and the debt collection agency but I would welcome any comments and advice including who else to send letters to, Financial services? Insurance ombudsman?.
Thank you.

Norfolk_Jim

presumably you had automatic renewal set up. You even got a reminder but took no action. You can hardly blame Admiral for that, as far as they were concerned you had agreed to automatic renewal and hadn't contacted them asking not to renew.

Now if you had contacted them and said you didn't want auto renewal I could see your point. Is that what you did?

InsideInsurance

The obvious thing to do is:

1) Send a cheque to pay your dues

2) Contact all your insurers advising them you have now had insurance cancelled for non-payment and see them load your premiums. Remember you must now declare this for the rest of your life.

As you said, you received a letter and forgot to deal with it. Your fault. This is exactly why auto renewal is supported by the Ombudsman as if you had the car and it wasnt on auto renewal you'd have been committing a criminal offense instead.

mikey72

But as the op no longer has the car, he can't take out insurance on it, so Admiral can't issue a policy.

Write to them, telling them you sold the car, and tell them the policy should not have been issued. This isn't the same as cancelling.

They may however, backdate the termination to when you got rid of the car, and charge you for that instead if they're feeling spiteful.

But it won't be a policy cancelled against you.

Parking_Trouble

Mikey, you've just opened the door for the pro-insurer brigade to point out that the OP should tell Admiral as soon as he scrapped the car. He surely should have paid a cancellation fee on the old policy?

Quentin

maz10 wrote: »

.... I'm in the process of sending letters to Admiral and the debt collection agency but I would welcome any comments and advice including who else to send letters to, Financial services? Insurance ombudsman?.
Thank you.

No point. (And a waste of stamps!)

You didn't tell them you no longer wanted the policy. So this is all your fault.

Concentrate your fire on Admiral to get this sorted, as you now do have a cancelled policy to disclose to any future insurer!

maz10_2

Thanks for the posts, it sounds like some of the reply's were from from insurance people. I have never cancelled an insurance policy but I have heard of insurers charging ludicrous amounts for the privilege, which I have never heard how they justify this?.

InsideInsurance

They justify it by calculating the total cost for selling insurance (eg sales call centre staff, their management, compliance teams to monitor them, advertising/ marketing, aggregator fees, affiliate fees, database fees, card processing fees, policy docs, printing, posting etc etc). They divide this by the total number of sales they make a year and then take a proportion of this to represent the cancellation fee (normally less than 50%).

You have to remember that the affiliate fee alone can be over £100. Google advertising can be £10 per click and conversion rates are normally under 5% meaning a £150 per sale or more.

A former client's calculation for a sale was a over £150

The discussion is then should those that stay with the insurer cover those costs or should those that sign up to a years contract but decide to terminate early cover them? The FOS to date have said it is fairer that those choosing to break their contract early do.

Quentin

maz10 wrote: »

..... I have never cancelled an insurance policy ........

That's irrelevant.

What is relevant to your issue is that you have had a policy cancelled by your insurer!

This is something you need to address as you are always asked by insurers whether you have ever had a policy cancelled.

Having a cancelled policy on your record can have long term consequences (eg most off the peg insurers won't quote anyone with this on their record)

mikey72

Parking_Trouble wrote: »

Mikey, you've just opened the door for the pro-insurer brigade to point out that the OP should tell Admiral as soon as he scrapped the car. He surely should have paid a cancellation fee on the old policy?

I wouldn't disagree.

But whether they can issue a policy for a car he doesn't own, then cancel a policy that couldn't exist, and require the cusomer to declare it for something they shouldn't have done, that's something I would challenge.

The policy should be voided from inception, and then no cancellation would have to be declared.

And yes, he should have told them when he no longer owned the car, and they may still charge him for that.

thenudeone

You had automatic renewal set up.
Admiral advised you that the policy was going to be renewed.
You didn't do anything about it.
They have carried on insuring you to drive.

You've said "What an absolutely disgusting way to do business"

How on earth have you come to that conclusion?

Would you rather that they cancelled your policy (even though they had told you that it was going to be renewed), and you ran the risk of having your vehicle seized by police and 6 points on your licence? They had no idea that you no longer had the car because YOU DIDN'T TELL THEM.

This problem is 100% YOUR FAULT. Take some responsibility for your own actions (and inactions).

You should contact them and grovel profusely; show them the letter proving that the car was scrapped, apologise for not telling them at the time, state that you're willing to pay their debt-collection costs, and ask politely for them to agree to amend their records to indicate that the policy was not cancelled by them, otherwise you will have problems getting insurance for the rest of your life.