Confused.Com - Driver Awareness Course - DECLARE

neil_scott_2

Any monitors on here should please make sure MSE knows about this as this is recommended on MSE website as a route to get Insurance!

All confused.com quotes beware, you must declare your DAC see letter below to confused.com to which I eagerly await a reply!


Dear Sirs

Declaration of Motoring Offences - Driver Awareness Course - Confused.Com


I am writing this on behalf of my son who recently contracted insurance through your site for his car, I am a retired Lloyds broker and after having completed your online proposal for car insurance and contracting and paying for the insurance via links provided from your website i am concerned that the information that you ask on your proposal does not fulfill the criteria of information that is required by the companies that operate under the guise of Diamond, Bell, Admiral to name a few… I completed the online form in good faith and to my surprise when the policy documentation came in from Diamond they asked me to read and confirm the Motor Proposal Confirmation and I discovered that the declaration of convictions etc now includes the term Driver Awareness Courses ( D A C ) yet no mention of this is made on your online proposal that you should declare this.

My son attended such a course in January of this year and was as a result of this not awarded any points or a conviction. I do not condone speeding in any form on the public highway.

I have therefore declared this additional information immediately to Diamond and thankfully my son has only been charged an additional £48.00 however I am concerned that this is not asked in your proposal and this could lead to a circumstance where an individual takes out insurance in good faith only to find that later after contracting a new policy and possibly lapsing a policy with an old insurer you could find that your new insurer will not continue the contract upon declaration of a Drivers Awareness Course or that you are charged a substantial additional premium or at worst a policy holder could find himself technically uninsured.

We believed that we contracted a policy, declared all the relevant information asked for and took out insurance in good faith only to find that after paying for our insurance in full, fully reading through the supplied documentation and after payment of the policy premium in full that we were then charged an additional premium.

I believe that you should make this extremely clear to your prospective clients that they should declare this fact in your proposal, you should ask this question as a separate question to convictions and that those insurers who choose to view a DAC as in fact a conviction then have the option to rate the proposal accordingly on the basis of fully declared infoiormation. In view of recent developments with the country's police force altering their websites over the last few days to reflect the changing attitude to DAC's you should look into this matter urgently.

I have copied this letter to BIBA, ABI and Lloyds as I am deeply concerned that a claim may occur and an insurer may choose to exercise its option to void a policy on the basis of undeclared DAC'S through no fault of the prospective policy holder.

Regards

212

I completely agree with your letter, and it is extremely concerning, but the sites are 'covered'.

I believe only the Admiral Group (Admiral, Bell, Elephant, Diamond - there are possibly extra companies within that EUI group, I'm not sure!) require you to state Awareness Courses, other insurers don't (or didn't make it clear - but that may change!). The recent changes to insurance rules mean they must ask clear questions - expecting people to answer yes to 'convictions' and then select DAC from a massive list is not clear, that is why Admiral et al have recently changed, as they previously expected people to do that.

They used to load premiums for it but only if you selected yes to a conviction - as a DAC isn't a conviction, you could answer no and should be fine (they'd have a interesting legal battle if they claim otherwise anyway). I'm renewing with them - the wording has now changed to something along the lines of do you have or have you attended... any convictions or speed awareness/driver improvement programmes, and so a policy may well now be declared void. If other companies have the same wording, the same would apply there.

Although some comparison sites do tell you to click through the quote, many don't, or certainly not clearly enough. They often pre-populate fields or get the 'closest match', which can sometimes be ridiculous. Unfortunately as you say insurers may not listen to any pleas of innocence, as some people will know full well what they are doing.

This is why I strongly recommend to anyone that gets a quote from a site like that clicks through and goes to amend the quote - then checks every single box on every single page - then the DAC declaration with EUI is very very clear. Comparison sites should be more responsible IMO, but the terms do unfortunately cover them - it's just a case of educating people to amend/check quotes.

I think MSE could do more to warn people when recommending comparison sites etc - particularly to young drivers, where a DAC loading with EUI can make such a hefty difference to premium that not declaring it won't always been seen as a mistake and may lead to voiding.

As an example, EUI names end with loads of spaces, e.g. if your name is 'Amanda' and you enter it on a comparison site, it enters onto EUI as 'Amanda ' (with 10+spaces, although MSE won't let me do that!) - while it should make no difference, I amend all my quotes to ensure this does not happen - they could try and void on a technicality like that. I must say I've found EUI to be very good to deal with, so not suggesting they'd do that, but I'd rather be safe & pedantic than have any trouble!

dacouch

I wonder who own confused.com?

Oh hang on it's Admiral...

magpiecottage

When I put "Confused" into the FCA register's search facility, it came up with a firm called Insprop.com Limited of

Floor 3
Greyfriars House
Greyfriars Road
Cardiff
CF10 3AZ

It also gave an e-mail address of steve.sanders@confused.com

The FCA registration number is 310635

I think that means your son has a valid complaint against Insprop.com Limited (i.e. confused.com). I would ask them to pay the extra £48 and take them to FOS if gthey refuse - it is only the cost of an e-mail to make the complaint and of printing off, completing and posting the FOS form if you have to.

Apart from the £48 for you, they are more likely to think carefully about their systems if a complaint is upheld.

worried_jim

magpiecottage wrote: »

When I put "Confused" into the FCA register's search facility, it came up with a firm called Insprop.com Limited of

Floor 3
Greyfriars House
Greyfriars Road
Cardiff
CF10 3AZ

It also gave an e-mail address of steve.sanders@confused.com

Also the same address for Admiral group.

212

dacouch wrote: »

I wonder who own confused.com?

Oh hang on it's Admiral...

:eek:

Wow, that's even worse!!

Ones that aren't owned by them fair enough to leave the question as 'convictions' - but they know what happens with the mapping involving confused & EUI quotes - how can they not adjust the question to reflect that!? :mad:

They also give a £50 voucher if you go direct (Diamond). My quote is over £120 more going direct from scratch (no cookies etc) than it is from any of the comparison sites - sneaky work!