One Call Insurance (Car)

KDC

It was my fault for ticking the "common law spouse" on the online form, but I spoke to them several times on the phone explaining that my named driver was my boyfriend and that we didn't live together - nothing was mentioned about the tickbox I'd done wrong.

When he sent his driving lic in they sent me a letter stating that our addresses didn't match. I rang and told them that they wouldn't because we don't live together. "Oh, we've got to change the documents. Hold on and I'll find out how much it'll be."

After a couple of minutes he came back and said "are you sitting down? It'll cost a little more than £500 to change from common law to partner on the docs." I almost fell over!!! I couldn't believe it. The Policy itself was less than £200. They said it would be cheaper to take him off as a named driver so I held again. "That'll only cost £200.12" he said!!! I was still amazed. I asked where that figure came from and part was from One Call themselves and the rest was from the Insurance Co called Covea.

I expected about £55 charge as it says that in their T&C but no more than that.

Anybody else has this huge cost??

InsideInsurance

Insured plus Spouse policies (which I assume a common law partner would map to) often do receive a notable premium reduction.... if you want to try and put logic to it then a married person is more settled and so responsible -v- the single boy/ girl racer who's still showing off to try and win/ keep their temp/ recent partner etc

The other "problem" is that you are dealing with a broker and so it could well be that they placed your policy with a company that gives massive discounts to I&S and so now your not wanting an I&S that discounts gone but your policy remains with them and so it could be your looking at the £55 admin fee and the further ~£450 additional premium.

There are certainly some insurers that will make additional load to the AP aspect on the fear that if you miss declared one aspect of the policy you may well have made other "mistakes" and so they partially compensate for that risk by making the loading bigger than they would otherwise.

first of all, get them to explain the costs as they should be breaking out fees and additional premiums separately.

Second, find out the cost of cancelling the policy.

Finally, go back to the aggregators and whatever normal shopping around process you do and get a new set of quotes for your business with your boyfriend correctly declared

You can then see if its cheaper to amend the existing policy or cancel it, pay the fee, and buy elsewhere

KDC

Thank you. Oh boy have I learnt from my mistake!!!

norbet

My experience (along with others - see link) with One Call has been less than pleasurable - their charges for admin and policy changes are extortionate. It seems they come up trumps on comparison sites with seemingly low prices and then hammer you with admin charges. We were charged a £55 fee to change address (we moved to a lower risk area with a garage and off street parking, but you can guess this didn't lower the premium!)
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2312843

In fairness to OneCall in this instance it was your mistake that resulted in the additional cost on your quote, but even if the error had resulted in less insurance risk (you moving in together for example) I think you can safely assume this wouldn't result in a reduction in your premium.

My advice would be to cancel and go elsewhere put it down to experience.