Car insurance Advice - am I right to feel cheated?

InsideInsurance

The FOS would be the external agency to escalate the complaint to (the FSA has now ceased to exist) but they typically have a 6 month time limit in which to make the complaint to them.

Given you never received a response from the company they may be willing to waive the time limit as its normally the final response that triggers the clock ticking

FreddieFrugal

Just as an update: I checked the FOS regulations on complaints etc. and as InsideInsurance suggested I am still well within the time limit to complain given that I had no original response from the company.

So I have sent a new complaint message to the company explaining the situation and asking for a refund of £108. Which is the price I paid minus the original sum I had been given.

If this isn't dealt with within the 8 weeks or I'm not happy with the result then I will contact FOS

FlameCloud

As a matter of interest, why couldn't you search for a different insurer when you saw the price?

FreddieFrugal

FlameCloud wrote: »

As a matter of interest, why couldn't you search for a different insurer when you saw the price?

Because of where I was, lack of a computer, using phone, stuck in car I couldn't legally drive away in and getting increasingly stressed.

If I had been at home on the computer then I would have been able to suss out the best course of action. Which may well have been cancellation of the policy and taking out a new one.

FlameCloud

So you had the Internet and capability to amend your policy online but not do a quick search?

FreddieFrugal

FlameCloud wrote: »

So you had the Internet and capability to amend your policy online but not do a quick search?

There's also the fact that I had just paid for a new car and didn't have the money in my account to fund an entirely new policy even if I had done a comparison search, found company, checked details, transferred money from other savings account, paid online, cancelled current policy... and at anypoint during this process something else could have easily gone wrong, system error stopped me from cancelling, internet dropped and prevented me from completing payment, and if that had happened then I really would have been stuffed. So not quite a 'quick search'. I'm sure I could have done a 'quick search' but that wouldn't have actually enabled me to drive the car away legally.

I wasn't going to trust their website to be able to sort this out a cancellation if it had just landed me with a ridiculous charge out of nowhere. If it was clearly not working properly then adding another bit of confusion by asking it to cancel the entire policy may well have made things worse.

So the only option was to pay it while I already had the website up (had set it up in advance before leaving) and then immediately lodged a complaint about it when I got home.