Should / can I attempt a claim here ?

mat99

Hi, looking for advice. I was going to head off to one of those web companies that offer to do this on my behalf, but read a lot of negative reivews on various mal-practices / ripoffs .

My situation is have an ongoing redundancy mortage payment protection policy that is current and has been running for over 10 years.
This is provided by a well-known provider and is independent, i.e. not provided by my mortage lender mortgage provider.

Somewhere around the mid-noughties (2003 - 2005)-ish, I contacted the provider requesting to review my policy cover to ensure it met my potential future needs.

So I called them to discuss the level of cover and whether I could increase. The customer service agent at the time advised me I could have whatever level of monthly cover I wanted, to cover other bills etc, so long as I paid the appropriate monthly insurance premium.

Great ! I thought, so I asked to increase my cover to well above my mortage and few credit card minimum monthly payments, as I thought it best to include cover for other bills (council tax, some of the weekly food shopping bill, car insurance policy etc).

This resulted in hefty increase to my monthly premium payment, but I had the satisfaction of knowing that if I was ever made redundant then I had plenty of financial coverage (of course, to start 60 days after initiating a claim process)

Then in 2008 I received a letter saying the company wanted to review my level of coverage to ensure its appropriate.

I called them to explain I was happy with the level of cover, but they also wanted to discuss what I had covered. I explained my approach, for food, council tax, credit cards, mortage etc and the then-advisor told me that I could not claim for some of these items, the policy only covered mortage, store and credit card minumim payments. :shocked:

I challenged why I was originally allowed to increase to the level I did and why the sudden change in policy, to which the advisor responded I should never have been allowed to do this in the first place and the best they can do was to reduce the level of payment cover and monthly premiums to address the bare essential mortage and card repayments only.

When I asked about all my previous monthly payments being based on advice from the original customer server agent, I was told in no uncertain terms ' Sorry, theres nothing we can do about that except reduce your future premium payments, Sir.':mad:

Luckily (or not), I still have cover via the same policy and provider (although they did change their company name to start with 'A' in recent years but kept their blue and yellow branding). I also still have the review letter I received back in 2008, albeit with my scribbles all over it as I engaged in conversation and realised I'd been paying over the odds for something that would not have paid out based on me being given bad advice.


So to cut to the point, have I a reasonable case to raise to recoup the difference in premiums I paid over about a 4 to 5 year period (2003 to 2008) ?

Any comments appreciated as this had been niggling me for some time

dunstonh

So to cut to the point, have I a reasonable case to raise to recoup the difference in premiums I paid over about a 4 to 5 year period (2003 to 2008) ?

Possibly yes. However, you could be timebarred (you have three years to raise a complaint about something you are reasonably aware of).

Equally possible is that you were told the wrong information the second time around. Standalone PPI does not necessarily have to cover debt. Some will only limit it to a percentage of your income. Most mortgage related ones will limit it to mortgage, associated products (household insurance etc) and 25% more.

I would check your policy details to see what it covers. A fully standalone PPI would not have the restrictions that the second person said. A restricted one could.

mat99

OK, thanks for the reply. Will check the paperwork to see what actual cover I'm entitled to. Almost certain its mortgage & card minimum repayments. 3 year limit is useful to know about, albeit not ideal for me now (my bad).