Inadvertant Break In Car Insurance

WeeJockMcPlop

Thanks to the lovely people :mad: at elephant.co.uk insurance, I had a 6 day break in my car insurance. I won't go into detail on the problem with elephant as it is subject to an official complaint that will almost certainly go to the FOS but the short version is that my insurance with them ceased on 3rd April without my knowledge until 9th April when I took on a new policy with another company.


Given the continuous car insurance rules brought in 2011, can I now retrospectively declare my car as SORN for those 5 days? Ironically enough the car was indeed off the road (on my driveway) for that time as we were down south for a long weekend.


Obviously I don't want to return my tax disc and get a new one since my car is properly insured and has been in regular use since the 9th and I certainly don't want an £80 fine for not having suitable insurance cover.


Is it possible to retrospectively declare the care SORN from the 5th and back on the road from the 9th?

arcon5

Before you receive any fine you receive an insurance advisory letter from the dvla telling you to sort it out. If you fail to act on it you get the fine.
You've already acted

notanewuser

WeeJockMcPlop wrote: »

Thanks to the lovely people :mad: at elephant.co.uk insurance, I had a 6 day break in my car insurance. I won't go into detail on the problem with elephant as it is subject to an official complaint that will almost certainly go to the FOS but the short version is that my insurance with them ceased on 3rd April without my knowledge until 9th April when I took on a new policy with another company.


Given the continuous car insurance rules brought in 2011, can I now retrospectively declare my car as SORN for those 5 days? Ironically enough the car was indeed off the road (on my driveway) for that time as we were down south for a long weekend.


Obviously I don't want to return my tax disc and get a new one since my car is properly insured and has been in regular use since the 9th and I certainly don't want an £80 fine for not having suitable insurance cover.


Is it possible to retrospectively declare the care SORN from the 5th and back on the road from the 9th?

Don't believe you. a) Elephant operate auto-renewal and b) something made you buy new cover on the 9th April.

WeeJockMcPlop

Very helpful, please try not to step on any stray Lego bricks or upturned plugs notanewuser, although on your side your statements were both correct if useless to me.


So I will go into detail and I might find someone with useful information instead.


Elephant did auto-renew my insurance, what they didn't do was take the payment for it nor did they tell me they were having difficulty taking the payment for it. They then cancelled 3 weeks later due to non-payment without informing me until they sent a "you have 7 days to pay" letter 6 days after they cancelled the policy.


Their helpful customer service guy demanded an additional £58 to reinstate the policy, despite the fault being theirs (the money was in my account when they claimed to have tried to take it and my debit card details had not changed), they lied about trying to contact me by letter and email and refused to even discuss the possibility of the fee being waived, even though I'd been a customer of theirs for 11 years (and have never made a claim in that time) and had every intention of continuing; my new policy was about £25 more than my renewal.


arcon5 - thanks for that. I was hoping that would be the case, but I know how stubborn and jobsworth government departments can be (having worked for a couple over the years).

arcon5

When asked the question 'have you ever had an insurance policy cancelled' does that mean you now have to select 'yes'?

You probably won't even hear from them now.

I was in a similar situation not too long ago - 2 months ago in fact. Changed insurance over to new car, left uninsured vehicle on drive and let dvla know 2 or 3 weeks later about sorn. Never heard a thing