Car Insurance cancelled by insurer, driver not informed, driver charged no insurance

dunstonh

The insurance company relied on the mail service but did not use phone or email.

Which is sensible as it proves a good audit trail.

Any advice or case law please ?

Not from me but you sound stuffed. Remember we are not emotionally involved in this and can only comment in the snippets you tell us.

1 - The insurer did notify you of cancellation in writing.
2 - The summons was issued in writing
3 - you failed to respond to either (for address reasons)
4 - your cancellation was due to non-payment. So, why didnt you deal with that when you looked at your bank statements?

You have a fair bit going against you. Indeed, you sound like an admin nightmare. If you had committed theft and caught for the 50th time you would expect leniency. However, you committed the heinous crime of bad admin and the magistrate will probably through the book at you

Best thing to do is a trip to a solicitor and get proper legal advice.

Quentin

Go to pepipoo for sound legal advice from people that know! (They won't be IFA's preaching you a sermon on how useless at admin you "sound")

Captain_Shambolic

I can only echo dunstonh really in that Insurance companies will use post if they can as it's more reliable than a phone call/text/fax and more secure. They don't need to prove you got the letter, only that they sent it because then they can show they did everything reasonable on their end.

dunstonh

Quentin wrote: »

Go to pepipoo for sound legal advice from people that know! (They won't be IFA's preaching you a sermon on how useless at admin you "sound")

Get out of bed the wrong side today?

EnglishMohican

Insurance companies are supposed to get the insurance certificate back to demonstrate that they have correctly cancelled the insurance. If they do not get it when they write to you the first time, they are supposed to keep trying - more letters perhaps - whatever.

So as you still have the certificate, you stand a chance of convincing the judge that the insurance company is in the wrong and did not try to inform you hard enough.

Having said that, the judge may consider you did not take receiving mail seriously enough as witness the rest of your story. It is reasonable to expect you to take some interest in mail people may send you and if you do not, then in my opinion (not that that counts) you are in the wrong.

So, I think it depends on how convincing you can be in explaining why you did not receive the various letters. I am sure they all wrote, why did you not receive?

bouncydog1

Looking at this in black and white you have said that you live between London and Edinburgh and the letter went to Edinburgh whilst you were in London.

That is hardly the insurer's fault - had you told the insurer that you lived at both addressess or had you advised them that you lived at the address where the insurance worked out cheaper?

There is also the matter of the additional premium. What did you do to incur the additional premium? Surely you knew about it.

I would still take legal advice but to be honest it seems that you are disorganised and on this occasion you have got caught out - it is your own responsibility to make sure that you can access your post.

si2013

thanks for the many advice emails, when i moved i did ask the insurer to contact me by phone, email as the post was unreliable, there was an additional premium of about £80, as I did not receive any letter for this they unilaterally cancelled the cover, how irresponsible as I was driving in London for 2 months without insurance then started back to Edinburgh without (allegedly) cover, I have pled not guilty and the defence is being misled by the insurer as when i set out on the journey to Edinburgh I had my certificate and no knowledge of the "cancellation", now waiting to hear the outcome so unable to comment much more at this stage. I believe the insurer acted arrogantly and recklessly with no concern for their client, maybe you know this company its B

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d Insurance ! Ive hear they will not communicate and from my experience they wont respond to email or phone calls, when I phoned them they said "we dont have time to phone our customers, we use the post" also I had previous dealing with them and they asked for my proof of ncd, I faxed it and they claimed they never received it. So ive used mail, email, phone and fax but they rely on post, I have established that many methods other than mail have been used and I specifically asked them to use email and phone but they are dismissive, they take the money and run.

FlameCloud

Did you ever once consider they have to use the post for a cancellation issue?

As above, it is not their fault if you do not keep them up to date with a correct correspondence address. Did you pay the additional premium when asked? If not, why not?

dacouch

FlameCloud wrote: »

Did you ever once consider they have to use the post for a cancellation issue?

As above, it is not their fault if you do not keep them up to date with a correct correspondence address. Did you pay the additional premium when asked? If not, why not?

Keep up, he was at a different address

si2013

Hello the case called in court on 21 March, I was not required to attend as I had previously attended and left my evidence/defence of the no insurance charge, received all my paperwork back last week and phoned the court to hear that the case had been dropped, so I was not driving without insurance and I won. the next move is to get an apology from the insurer or take it to the ombudsman.