Swintons car ins - can this really be right?

Pammi_J

Swopped my car 2 weeks after taking out £675 policy with swintons, changed to a 1.2 fiesta (lot smaller from my 1.7) I had already paid £50 deposit on initial take out of policy to swop they chaged me £5 plus i had already paid the £43 aug installment. The fiesta was quoted at £695 and they charged me another £50 deposit and installments of £45 which i paid for sept.
Then due to personal issues i had to leave the flat i shared (abuse) - and beginning of oct aquired a new address for me and my daughter, Went into swintons to notify change of address and as due to the chaos i put the oct installment money into the wrong bank account so needed to pay.
They told me that there was a charge for a returned dd (which stated on their t&c,s £24) - they then said that as i have changed address the policy has now gone up by £276 a year - which i now live in a house with a garage and drive (not the flat where i had to park the car 5 mins down the road and couldnt keep my eye on it.
So my istallements mthly would now be £76!! On top of that there would be another "deposit" - i questioned that i think taking 3 x deposits in 6-8 weeks is a bit excessive, they then said its for the change of address (which depending on which swintons website you look at varys from nothing to £25).
I ran a quick check on car insurance quotes keeping all data the same but just entering new address......the cheapest im getting is £330...swintons is coming out at £674 which is basically not a lot of change (which is what i expected)...incidently my house/contents insurance stayed the same.
The person i spoke to in branch was more concerned with telling me it costs him £1000 to insure his toyota celica in a area of town....which just made my p reg 1.2 fiesta look really overcharged at nearly £900!!
I have 5 yrs no claims etc ect.
In the end i paid the installment that was missing £48....they set up a dd for nov for £76 for new quote, as for the £50 i just havent got it...they have left the policy in the old address and wont change it until its paid...but they will take out the new installments at the higher rate. Which makes me feel a tad uncomfortable as i know that all details on policy should be kept informed (which i have but they wont action it).
I have read on their t&c,s to see how much it would be to cancell the policy with them...but again its not clear - it seems to be £50 (magic number) - which if it is then i would cancel with the money rather than pay it over for change of address!

Quentin

Get them to confirm in writing how much cancellation will cost.

They do have high cancellation charges apart from the £50 admin fee.

InsideInsurance

Swintons is a broker and so when you do a quote online it selects the cheapest insurer from their panel for you. When you do a mid term adjustment however you are locked in with the same insurer unless you cancel the policy and so with a broker you cannot automatically compare the price of an amended policy to the price of a brand new policy unless you know the insurer is the same in both cases.

The "deposits" sound like administration fees and fifty quid is the upper average amoungst companies these days - all to drive down that initial premium to get people in the door.

Swintons are very good at putting fees in place, certainly check and get it in writing how much it'll cost to cancel as they have been known to include all sorts of additional fees, cancellation fee for policy, cancellation fee for credit etc etc