Admiral renewing without authorisation

laurenced

Hi all

I just got a strange letter from Admiral saying that my insurance policy was cancelled from 6 Mar (my renewal date) and that they had refunding me £644.78. This seemed odd because I had already renewed with their sister company Elephant for roughly £550.

So I went onto my online banking and found out that they had taken the £644 out on the 12th (no authorisation from me) and refunded it on the 19th. I obviously hadn't budgeted for such a large amount leaving my account, and as a result I was in my overdraft for a week without knowing it. Needless to say I've incurred charges for this.

I've written an email to Admiral giving them what-for, and saying I'm going to forward the complaint to the FSA (which I will, if Admiral don't do anything with it).

It's extraordinary how these cowboys work.. they think they can do whatever they damn well please. And I was reasonably happy with them until this (have used EUI on and off for 5-6 years of driving and never had a problem, inc an Elephant claim a year ago).

Sigh.

boatman

Its standard now unless you tell them not to... not great!!

wealdroam

OP, when Admiral sent you the renewal notice a few weeks ago, what did you do about it?

boatman

wealdroam wrote: »

OP, when Admiral sent you the renewal notice a few weeks ago, what did you do about it?

Can I just comment on that, if you are going to say what i think you might. I go away to sea for months at a time, so unless someone else is opening my post an insurance company could well take payment and i would be none the wiser, so for them to take it on the basis of probably a clause buried in the T&C's is a bit unfair.

wealdroam

boatman wrote: »

Can I just comment on that, if you are going to say what i think you might. I go away to sea for months at a time, so unless someone else is opening my post an insurance company could well take payment and i would be none the wiser, so for them to take it on the basis of probably a clause buried in the T&C's is a bit unfair.

Thank you for your thought on this.

I don't want to drag this thread too far off at a tangent, but surely in your situation it is quite important to put a process in place to ensure this type of thing doesn't get overlooked.
It really isn't the motor insurer's problem, or that of your household insurers, or that of your council tax collector, that you are not available to receive your mail, is it?

We are not talking about "a clause buried in the T&C's" here.
Most insurers do inform people in advance, before taking money.

Back to the OP's case, due to becoming overdrawn, we can probably assume that there is a direct debit involved here.

It is a condition of the Direct Debit Guarantee that the requestor must notify the payer before taking the money if the amount changes (show me an insurance policy where the premium doesn't change from year to year).

OP, if you really didn't get notified beforehand, contact your bank for a refund of the charges.

boatman

I just think when you take out insurance they should be obliged to tell you or give a tick box to agree/disagree to automatic payment, at the moment its far too convenient for the insurance companies to stay silent and just take it. I guess its down to regulation in the same way they now read out certain legal bit of information.

laurenced

wealdroam wrote: »

OP, when Admiral sent you the renewal notice a few weeks ago, what did you do about it?

I didn't do anything, although I'll admit that I perhaps should have read it more closely. But it has never been my experience that car insurance automatically renews (I have always paid annually in full).

Regardless of the small print, I think they should be at pains to confirm that it's okay to autorenew when the amount is so high. The fact that they've refunded the whole thing because I 'cancelled' it (I did no such thing), rather than taking some off for admin expenses, implies that they know this isn't quite right - because if they thought they were in the right they'd be the first to reduce the refund for admin fees etc.

rs65

laurenced wrote: »

The fact that they've refunded the whole thing because I 'cancelled' it (I did no such thing), rather than taking some off for admin expenses, implies that they know this isn't quite right - because if they thought they were in the right they'd be the first to reduce the refund for admin fees etc.

They probably realised that you took a policy out with a sister company, hence no admin fees. I think they have done you a favour. Other insurers wouldn't refund in full.

laurenced

rs65 wrote: »

They probably realised that you took a policy out with a sister company, hence no admin fees. I think they have done you a favour. Other insurers wouldn't refund in full.

You may well be right. It's definitely something I will watch out for in future.

mazza111

It's common practice these days I'm afraid. If you read the renewal notice it actually tells you that you need to call up before the start date to cancel or do nothing should you want to continue the policy.

Gloomendoom

rs65 wrote: »

They probably realised that you took a policy out with a sister company, hence no admin fees. I think they have done you a favour. Other insurers wouldn't refund in full.

They will if you can prove that you have taken out insurance for the same risk with another insurance company.

Looking at it from a different angle, I was happy for my insurance to auto renew when I was in Australia. It saved me the hassle of sorting it out from afar.