Hastings Direct's charges - help!

bubblebobble

Hello!

My partner (32, 12 years driving experience, 10 years no claims, pays £41 a month in insurance) had a bump in February, another driver overtook him (other driver was on wrong side of the road, on a sliproad) and crashed into his front right. My partner is insured with Hastings Direct, but after 3 months they've not managed to settle, they're going 50/50 as no witnesses. Annoying £350 excess, but okay.

In May, my partner purchased a new car (Vauxhall Astra), and added me to the Fiat Punto insurance so I could learn to drive. As he could only use ncb on one car, Hastings told him to keep it on the Fiat, so the price changed to £51 a month for the Fiat (for him, plus me) and £112 for the Astra. This was horrid, but as only for a month or two we've rolled with it. Customer services person told us when I passed my other half could just ring up and get it all transferred over. No mention of costs.

Monday, I passed my test. Rang Hastings to get insurances changed. They are charging £96.11 for the Fiat as a cancellation fee + an extra charge as there's still a claim pending (not our fault, it happened in February - not sure why they're being so slow) PLUS they want to charge a cancellation fee on the Astra's insurance as it will be re-underwritten to add his NCB on (not sure how much his NCB will be reduced by following the bump, they've not said). ANyway, we've argued that they didn't say that on the phone when we did this and they're finding the phone call transcription to check what was said.

Does any of this seem right? It seems like effectively we may have to pay £96.11 to cancel the Fiat and £75 to ammend the policy on the Astra, PLUS as his NCB is in a state of flux, continue paying the massive charge on the AStra until it's sorted. I'm sure something is wrong somewhere along the line - we've been quoted £800 JOINLY for two multicar policies with Admiral - way it's going we'll be paying £300 ish to Hastings for nothing!

Can anyone help? It's currently left at Fiat insurance cancelled - i'll get a quote with someone else - and they're going to listen to the tape and ring back on Friday when they'll take the £96.11 off me

Hastings_Direct_company_representative

Hi BubbleBobble,

Thanks for taking the time to post about your experience, I am sorry to hear you are having problems. If you could get in contact with me via email with some policy details I would be happy to get one of our Customer Relations advisors to investigate the issue fully for you.

Many Thanks,
Jamie Wicks,
[EMAIL="socialmedia@hastingsdirect.com"]socialmedia@hastingsdirect.com[/EMAIL]

bubblebobble

THank you Jamie, have emailed you. Much appreciated.

dacouch

Bubblebobble, if Hastings sort the problem out please post back on here to say what they did. It may be helpful for other Hastings Policyholders.

If you're not sure whether what they propose is a good deal or not, feel free to post up here for our opinions.

P.S If you can try and change Insurer at renewal as Hastings are not a great Insurer

bubblebobble

dacouch wrote: »

Bubblebobble, if Hastings sort the problem out please post back on here to say what they did. It may be helpful for other Hastings Policyholders.

If you're not sure whether what they propose is a good deal or not, feel free to post up here for our opinions.

P.S If you can try and change Insurer at renewal as Hastings are not a great Insurer

Thank you Dacouch - will keep you posted. Any cancellation charge would make us re-think our insurance, especially as we're now a multi car family since i passed

dacouch

If your confident they did not warn you about the charges and the rep does not sort it out. You can make an official complaint and / or request a copy of the data they hold on you including recordings / transcripts of all calls. It would cost you £10 to get the data and calls.

bubblebobble

Am confident no warning of calls, or suggestion that we do things in any other way (like use the NCB on the big car not the smaller one, or keep the FIesta's policy running rather than cancelling) - I would not hesitate to take things to a higher level if necessary, but hopefully won't need to as Jamie has his team looking into it for us. Kind regards

bubblebobble

No response from customer services as yet

bubblebobble

Even more confused now, come home to a cheque for £15 to my OH for the cancelled policy? Presumably the astra policy the woman cancelled (and reinstated) by accident?!

[Deleted User]

I have a serious problem with Hastings as well.

They charged me a fee for adding a claim that I already told them about before I took the policy!

vaio

sounds like Jamie is going to be a busy boy