Being charged £37.10 admin fee to cancel my home insurance policy. Is this common?

dunstonh

It is the incorrect use of "cancel" in the thread title which has lead the insurance brigade to come out blaming the op!

If there was incorrect use in the thread title then perhaps there was incorrect use on the phone call.

Quit with your pathetic "Insurance brigade" style responses. It just shows a complete bias in your posts which aids no-one.

Quentin

dunstonh wrote: »

....Quit with your pathetic "Insurance brigade" style responses. It just shows a complete bias in your posts which aids no-one.

Who are you to start ordering posters to "quit" and use inflammatory language like "pathetic".

I am certainly not biased against the industry at all.

You on the other hand constantly back insurers v policyholders.

Eg. Your campaign against it being pointed out that a complaint escalation to the FOS is always worth a try irrespective of why dunsronh says you have no grounds!

(Goodwill payments and waived admin fees etc are regularly reported from those who ignore you and take a punt).

nobbysn*ts

dunstonh wrote: »

It is important to not mix up the term "cancel" with "do not renew". A cancellation charge is made when you cancel. There is no charge made when you do not renew.

It would take a particularly vacuous/blo*dy minded employee to have a conversation with a customer, regarding their renewal offer at the end of the month, who wishes to then leave as they have a better offer elsewhere, to actually misconstrue the customers intentions, and go ahead and cancel the policy immediately, because they used the word "cancel" rather than "lapse" the policy to them when they declined the renewal. And again, if they said there was a charge, let alone took it, it is worth reporting the behaviour to the FOS, as they are at best misleading the customer, at worse taking payments they have no right to legally.

dunstonh

You on the other hand constantly back insurers v policyholders.

How very selective of you. Still, I dont expect the facts get in the way of your biased opinion.

Quentin

You happily post that I am "biased" in your inflammatory post #12, yet when I reply with my view, you want to prolong the issue by repeating your ill founded "bias" jibe and adding your "selective" comment.


NWYGB!

InsideInsurance

nobbysn*ts wrote: »

It would take a particularly vacuous/blo*dy minded employee to have a conversation with a customer, regarding their renewal offer at the end of the month, who wishes to then leave as they have a better offer elsewhere

You have to remember that almost all direct insurers are non-advisory (as are many brokers for mass market personal lines GI)

If the customer says they want to cancel the day before the end of the policy they cannot advise the customer that it'd be better to allow it to run for the sake of 1 day -v- the cancellation fee.

I've seen internal audit mark down someone who said "thats a nice car" when a customer called to get an indicative quote for changing their car to a brand new Merc SL AMG and Audit consider this advising the customer.

trukdiver

InsideInsurance wrote: »

You have to remember that almost all direct insurers are non-advisory (as are many brokers for mass market personal lines GI)

If the customer says they want to cancel the day before the end of the policy they cannot advise the customer that it'd be better to allow it to run for the sake of 1 day -v- the cancellation fee.

It's not really treating customers fairly, is it?

Does telling the customer what their options are then letting them make up their own mind count as advice? Maybe it depends on the rep? When I told Churchill (also part of DLG) that I didn't want to renew because I'd had a better quote, they immediately beat it. On another occasion, I was told I could lapse my policy so I could get discount on a new policy.

InsideInsurance

trukdiver wrote: »

It's not really treating customers fairly, is it?

Does telling the customer what their options are then letting them make up their own mind count as advice? Maybe it depends on the rep? When I told Churchill (also part of DLG) that I didn't want to renew because I'd had a better quote, they immediately beat it. On another occasion, I was told I could lapse my policy so I could get discount on a new policy.

And here lies the problem. As a non-advisory regulated body you legally are not allowed to give advice. You can only present information and allow the (potential) customer to make their own decisions.

Clearly people with many years of experience of insurance will be perfectly skilled in giving advice but because of the license the employer holds they cannot do so even though that may to be the customers detriment.

Of cause you can then get into an argument of "what is advice?". Some would say that if a customer states they want a single course of action that listing another option isnt advice but simply stating facts. Others would say that because of the employees "expert" status that it is possible the caller could construe it as advice as they've proposed it as an alternative to what the caller wanted.

Each company will take its own view of where the balance is and some are more risk adverse than others (hence audit picking up on "thats a nice car" - in my opinion that is fact not advice and even if it is advice it isnt going to influence and insurance decision)

A classic example was speaking to a home insurer about getting a quote. My first question was what their maximum single article limit was and when they said it was £2k or so I somewhat flippantly said "there's no point in continuing then is there?" to which they promptly responded that they couldnt advise me on if it was worth getting a quote or not.

nobbysn*ts

InsideInsurance wrote: »

You have to remember that almost all direct insurers are non-advisory (as are many brokers for mass market personal lines GI)

If the customer says they want to cancel the day before the end of the policy they cannot advise the customer that it'd be better to allow it to run for the sake of 1 day -v- the cancellation fee.

I've seen internal audit mark down someone who said "thats a nice car" when a customer called to get an indicative quote for changing their car to a brand new Merc SL AMG and Audit consider this advising the customer.

And that's the very problem. If a vacuous/blo*dy minded, but still very clear misunderstanding of a term used by a customer is somehow to be used to justify a clear mistake in terminology, it would be a very easy complaint to win. Especially if the call hand declined to clarify the customers true intentions, and decided that a simple question as to what they meant could be interpreted as giving advice. Sometimes as has been said, there is a bias, but I don't think it's Quentin.

nobbysn*ts

InsideInsurance wrote: »

..........I've seen internal audit mark down someone who said "thats a nice car" when a customer called to get an indicative quote for changing their car to a brand new Merc SL AMG and Audit consider this advising the customer.

And you wonder why customers have little respect for insurers, if that's an example of their business decisions.