cancelling car policy

bobby_1

Hi, I took out a new car insurance policy on the 17th of this month paying a deposit of £153, (the policy starts on the 22nd of this month),I have decided to cancel, rang brokers to tell them today and they say it will cost me £35 for their admin time, plus i will have to wait up to 60 days for the refund of my deposit of £153 which to me seems a totally unreasonable. amount of time. Any advice would be much appreciated,

dunstonh

Why do you think it is unreasonable?

vaio

dunstonh wrote: »

Why do you think it is unreasonable?

bobby_1 wrote: »

.....I will have to wait up to 60 days for the refund of my deposit of £153......

might give you a clue

bobby_1 wrote: »

......... Any advice would be much appreciated,

Put a formal complaint in to the insurer

if you paid by credit card it might be worth having a word with your card issuer

lisyloo

60 days is unreasonable.
There is no justification for that.
Why should anyone wait that long to get their money back?

jobdone1

I was on the understanding that you do have a 14 day cooling off period without loss. I might be wrong but i am sure that is law

lisyloo

According to "Which", insureres can charge a "reasonable" admin fee.
From previous forum discussions I believe the ballpark is up to £50, so the £35 fee seems reasonable by the standards of the day.

http://www.which.co.uk/money/insurance/guides/find-the-best-car-insurance/car-insurance-fees-and-charges/

What does not appear reasonable in these days of on-line faster payments is 60 days to get your money back.

Of course the operator may be giving a worse case scenario e.g. you just miss the monthly batch run, but I still don't think it's acceptable and a complaint would move things along.

jobdone1

Further to my post. Just had a look for you and its states that you have a 14 day cooling off period in writing to the insurer, They are allowed to take a reasonable admin fee and any insurance used. Example if you cancel after inception date you will pay for the amount of days insured but as in this case it has not started so just an admin fee. The big one is they have to refund any monies oweing to you within 30 days NOT 60.

Hope this helps.

redskyatnight_2

I agree that 60 days to refund your money is a lot. I would complain to the Company's head office.

dacouch

lisyloo wrote: »

60 days is unreasonable.
There is no justification for that.
Why should anyone wait that long to get their money back?

I worked for a small broker a few years ago, the way they were regulated by FSA with regard to client money. Is that the client money had to sit in a ring fenced account and was not available for the brokers own use eg paying bills.

Once the broker had received their monthly account from X Insurer they could reconcile the accounts and then pay them over to the Insurer (Possibly using payment terms eg 30 days after account date). Once the money had been paid to the Insurer they were then able to withdraw their broker commission into their company account and had use of it eg bills and wages etc

As part of their regulation they were unable to pay return premiums from an Insurer to a customer until they had gone through the same process eg reconcile account and pay it.

(I may be wrong on this as I don't really deal with accounts and thats how they explained their system to me. If it's wrong hopefully II or Magpie Cottage could clarify

That might well explain their 60 day delay.

Quentin

lisyloo wrote: »

According to "Which", insureres can charge a "reasonable" admin fee.
From previous forum discussions I believe the ballpark is up to £50, so the £35 fee seems reasonable by the standards of the day.....

Cancellation fees aren't "up to" £50. They just have to be "reasonable".

From the which? link you posted:

Unfortunately there is no definition of what 'reasonable' is. For instance, Budget charges £75, while esure and Hastings Direct charge £55

lisyloo

Cancellation fees aren't "up to" £50. They just have to be "reasonable".

I agree.
From what I've seen on these boards over the last 10 years, the general concensus is that it wouldn't be worth making a complaint for anything less than £50 - and that's from knowledge of looking at what the FOS considers reasonable

Thanks for giving me the opprtunity to clarify :-)

Of course anyone can complain about anything if they so wish but there are test cases and information on the FOS website, so it is possible to work out what is considered reasonable by the authorities that decide these things.