Over £300 to cancel car insurance policy?

jobdone1

1ST CENTRAL um always customers complaining they seem a little shoddy.

spacey2012

Just be warned With regards to what the FOS FSA are calling themselves this week I stand corrected.
But TWO people in two months have ended up with fixed CCJ claims that have been unpaid following "expert advice" of Quentin.

He refuses to acknowledge this and self appoints himself with his alter EGO other account as "board expert"
I have dealt with one CCJ by reset to N244, the second left the board after a blasting from Quentin .

Glass houses and stones Mr Quentin.
Have you lost the password for your alter Ego account, unusual not to see you back yourself up, gone a bit quiet that one since it was pointed out ?

sithemadmonkey

I hate to point it out Spacey, but this thread isn't about CCJs, it's about cancellation fees.

Yes, you and Quentin regularly have your little spats on here and yes, neither of you are right all the time but please don't bring irrelevant arguments into this thread. Quentin was right in this circumstance and (for the purposes of this thread) that's all that matters.

OP, the T&Cs of the policy (and your instalment agreement) will probably show that you are liable for everything detailed on the cancellation breakdown. It looks like a very large chunk of the outstanding balance is the add-ons which were put on the policy which, unfortunately for you, often do not have any refund if cancelled part-way through.

Having said that, there's nothing wrong with complaining - it's your right and there's a very real chance that a firm but polite written complaint with a threat of FOS escalation will encourage them to write off at least some of the outstanding in an effort to avoid the c.£500 fee they'd get charged for a FOS case (regardless of whether the complaint is upheld or not). Good luck!

Quentin

spacey2012 wrote: »

....Have you lost the password for your alter Ego account, unusual not to see you back yourself up, gone a bit quiet that one since it was pointed out ?

Just a fantasy response.

Care to name this "alter ego"?

DJBenson

spacey2012 wrote: »

Just be warned With regards to what the FOS FSA are calling themselves this week I stand corrected.
But TWO people in two months have ended up with fixed CCJ claims that have been unpaid following "expert advice" of Quentin.

He refuses to acknowledge this and self appoints himself with his alter EGO other account as "board expert"
I have dealt with one CCJ by reset to N244, the second left the board after a blasting from Quentin .

Glass houses and stones Mr Quentin.
Have you lost the password for your alter Ego account, unusual not to see you back yourself up, gone a bit quiet that one since it was pointed out ?

It's quite clear what Quentin is saying - the FSA (as-was, FCA now) and the FOS are two entirely separate entities; one is a regulator, the other an ombudsman (the clue is in the name).

The Financial Conduct Authority (formerly the FSA - and to be honest, the name change was needed as there were two FSA's, one being the Food Standards Agency so this is a good move to differentiate the two) are not customer-facing.

To complain about a financial product or service, you must first go through the companies own procedures - once you exhaust those, you can then refer the case to the ombudsman. I'm not sure if its changed now but when I worked in Financial Services, we used to get charged for every case that the ombudsman took on, so it is quite a powerful threat when you tell the company you are taking them to FOS.

I've won a fight against unfair terms and conditions a pet insurance company who wanted to charge me the rest of the policy after we had to have our dog put down, yes it was in the terms and conditions but I argued they were unfair and threatened FOS and got my money back so its always worth trying.

Remember: financial institutions are bound by a code whereby they have to "treat customers fairly" - they can write what the hell they like in their terms but if your case can be deemed as being unfair then you have a case for getting the charges cancelled/refunded.

sithemadmonkey

DJBenson wrote: »

I'm not sure if its changed now but when I worked in Financial Services, we used to get charged for every case that the ombudsman took on

Financial Services firms get a certain number of 'free' complaints (I think it's been upped recently to 25) per year, the remainder are charged somewhere in the region of £500 a pop regardless of outcome. The only exception is if a complaint is deemed 'vexatious' i.e. without merit (although this is rarely used). I would have thought that 1st Central are likely to go over 25 FOS complaints in a year, so threats of FOS will make them think twice about the cost of the complaint.