Car ins charging £51 to change from mr to mrs??? What do i do??

KAM_MAZ

Hello,

Ive just been told by Bedford Insurance that it will cost me a staggering and totally unjustified £51 to change an online error when purchasing insurance recently.

2 small clerical errors being:

Changing title from Mr to Mrs and

Changing House Husband to House Wife!

Im concerned that im cornered as it will cost me more to cancel my policy via the various penalties the idiot kept on repeating to me in his robotic voice on the phone earlier. It sounds like a big con, told him he could easily correct it at his end, but his reply was the Insurance Doc's all need to correcting, this need correcting that needs correcting blah blah blah and that he could've charged the £150 instead which he feels would be too excessive. The cheek of the man, i put the phone down on him.

He said i was free to view the actual online form to view the errors for myself.

I told him i'd understand if it was a major fraud issue i didnt disclose, eg points, cautions, convictions, false no claims, but it was just a simple typing errror/s but just got a scripted pitiful answer.


PLEASE HELP ASAP

Kamran

dunstonh

What do their published terms state for charges for administration?

£51 sounds like a strange figure for just administration. So, I wonder if there is a premium adjustment there as well.

zeon999

So you made multiple mistakes when setting up but your mad at them because they charge to fix errors?

I would agree £51 seems a little excessive for making the changes, though at the same time I assume you used a comparison site when you did it and took out the cheapest one you could.

How do you think they can run a company with such low rates? That's right by stinging people with fees.

If you had got on the phone to the insurance company instead of using a comparison site then the mistake would not of happened, if the sales person made a mistake its their fault and they fix it for free.

This is the problem with taking insurance out online if there are any mistakes there is only one person to blame and that's the person taking out the insurance.

Anyway, now to the point of trying to help. When did you take out the insurance? Is there any possibility of cancelling while under a cooling period of some sort?

jobdone1

UK insurance rules state that consumers have a 14-day “cooling off” period when they purchase most kinds of cover. This means that, if you want to end a policy within two weeks of receiving your documentation, you should receive a more or less full refund of your premiums. But if you cancel within the cooling-off period, you may have to pay an administration fee (typically less than a full cancellation charge) as well as the cost of however many days you were covered for.
So if your policy has not yet come into effect when you cancel, you should only have to pay the administration charge. You won’t be able to cancel in this way if you have made any claims within the cooling-off period.


This is what i found so look at how long you have or have not been insured for then have a look at the cancellation charge.

jobdone1

Administration set-up fee for new policies – you
will be advised of the amount before you commit
to the insurance.
Up to 35% of the insurers annual premium
Alterations and / or additions Up to £150.00, subject to a minimum charge
of £12.50
Professional Charges for Legal Policy Up to £90.00
Duplicate documents £21.50
Renewal Administration Up to 35% of the insurers annual premium
Cancellation of Policy Up to 25% of refund
Copy of voice recording £25.00
Printed paper copy of documents £5.00

This is their fees. One thing i noticed it states a min £12.50 upto £150 for changes.

ffacoffipawb

KAM_MAZ wrote: »

Hello,

Ive just been told by Bedford Insurance that it will cost me a staggering and totally unjustified £51 to change an online error when purchasing insurance recently.

2 small clerical errors being:

Changing title from Mr to Mrs and

Changing House Husband to House Wife!

Im concerned that im cornered as it will cost me more to cancel my policy via the various penalties the idiot kept on repeating to me in his robotic voice on the phone earlier. It sounds like a big con, told him he could easily correct it at his end, but his reply was the Insurance Doc's all need to correcting, this need correcting that needs correcting blah blah blah and that he could've charged the £150 instead which he feels would be too excessive. The cheek of the man, i put the phone down on him.

He said i was free to view the actual online form to view the errors for myself.

I told him i'd understand if it was a major fraud issue i didnt disclose, eg points, cautions, convictions, false no claims, but it was just a simple typing errror/s but just got a scripted pitiful answer.


PLEASE HELP ASAP

Kamran

Gender neutrality means both risks should be charged the same, so the £51 does not reflect any extra risk because the law states they cannot charge men and women different premiums.

It's therefore a high charge to amend a couple of fields in a database!

Aretnap

ffacoffipawb wrote: »

Gender neutrality means both risks should be charged the same, so the £51 does not reflect any extra risk because the law states they cannot charge men and women different premiums.

It's therefore a high charge to amend a couple of fields in a database!

They can charge for different occupations though. They shouldn't charge different premiums for housewife and househusband as that's nothing more than a difference of gender... but I suppose it's always possible that they still do and that nobody's noticed or corrected the algorithm yet.

vaio

jobdone1 wrote: »

Administration set-up fee for new policies – you will be advised of the amount before you commit to the insurance.
Up to 35% of the insurers annual premium
Alterations and / or additions Up to £150.00, subject to a minimum charge of £12.50
Professional Charges for Legal Policy Up to £90.00
Duplicate documents £21.50
Renewal Administration Up to 35% of the insurers annual premium
Cancellation of Policy Up to 25% of refund
Copy of voice recording £25.00
Printed paper copy of documents £5.00

This is their fees. One thing i noticed it states a min £12.50 upto £150 for changes.

That list is so vague as to fall foul of the FOS rules and in fact the figure for a copy of a voice recording is more than allowed under DPA. For a max of £10 organisations are required to provide you with a copy of ALL information they hold on you, so voice, paper & electronic.

FOS would expect the fees to be clear, having an admin fee that ranges from £12.50 to £150 is far from clear and therefore likely to be unenforceable.

I'd be inclined to pay the requested fee and then lodge a complaint.

My money would be on them refunding you rather than trying to explain how their charges are fair & clear to the FOS.

Lord_Baltimore

zeon999 wrote: »

How do you think they can run a company with such low rates? That's right by stinging people with fees.

How true. But if you complain, and the OP should, they can't charge an admin fee for that. In fact, the more people that complain about so called admin fees, the less attractive they will be to insurers. Insurers will have to be upfront competitive instead of hiding all these little extras.

burnoutbabe

why change it?

i assume you put somewhere else you were male?

therefore being called a housewife over househusband or Mrs over Mr has no legal bearing. I can call myself Miss, Mrs or Ms if i fancy and I assume legally Mr if I want to. Or Dr or anything. It has no legal meaning as such.

and Housewife is just a jobtitle, which could apply to a man or a woman. Same as dinnerlady.

KAM_MAZ

Many many thanks for all your replies...

Unfortunately, its been exactly a month today that i took ins out as renewal date was 20th June' 13. I have not had any documentation through the post. I believe with it being an online ins that all doc's are sent via email now. The small problem is my hotmail account has been down for the past couple weeks and im in the process of getting it sorted. So cannot look into there guidelines.

Im with the opinion of that of a couple replies above: Mr/Mrs or House-Wife/husband on a online application have no significant bearing on a premium and they are taking me for a ride. I will call the Ombudsman on Monday and try and get further guidance. Ive tried googling "Car insurance rules and regulations" but not much directly to read up on that is relevant to me.

Surely, there must be a governing, independent body that monitors and control the actions of car insurance companies so the consumer doesnt get ripped off ???? Anyone know of who it is ???


Thousands out there use the 3-4 major comparisons sites which compares 100's of companies. The ease of it via the internet and
getting it booked quickly heavily outweighs ringing individual companies. Am i the only one who's made a couple of clerical errors and being threatened with a big penalty to correct something that can be easily done on a computer at there end ???? Theres got to be many but i guess they are the lucky one's whos's insurance companies simply correct it without fuss.

More replies to my thoughts above would be most welcome!
Thaning you immensely!
Kamran