Insurance Auto Renewal

Hooli

Hi
I've just noticed today that AA Insurance has taken a years payment on my cc for my ex partners home insurance. I haven't lived with him for over 18months. I can prove with my tenancy agreement that i haven't lived there for over 18 months. I didn't receive a renewal notice, it will have gone to his house. I have now cancelled any future payments on my CC but they advise they cannot reimburse the payment gone out yesterday. I can't contact the ex as i left due to his abuse.

Where do i stand? Surely he will have had to notify insurance company of change of circumstances as i was named on his home insurance. I don't have access to these details, therefore they will not discuss his policy with me.

Help please? I can't afford to lose £180.

unholyangel

Who wont reimburse you? Your bank/card provider or the insurance company?

Contact your bank about a section 75 claim. Forget anything to do with your tenancy. Its cut and dried imo. You have no contract with them. Any agreement you had with your ex to make a one off payment is completely separate.

They cannot chase/charge you for money he owes - unless you co-signed a contract of course.

If your card issuer refuse to help, make a complaint to the financial ombudsman.

Hooli

Thanks Unholyangel

The insurance was paid on my cc and was on 'auto renewal'. I am sure with all insurance quotes that you are legally obliged to advise the insurer within a specified time, if your circumstances change. Therefore, he will have received the renewal about 4 weeks ago, not notified them and just allowed payment to go through, although, my cc details will have been quoted on the renewal.

I contacted my cc and they said as the insurance was on auto renewal they couldn't refund, however, they will make sure no future payment will be taken. They advised me to contact the insurer, but as we know, if i'm not the policy holder, they won't talk to me! It wasn't a joint policy but i was named as living at the property.

Frustrating that even though i can prove i don't live there and haven't for 22 months, they can still take payment from my card.

InsideInsurance

Hooli wrote: »

Where do i stand? Surely he will have had to notify insurance company of change of circumstances as i was named on his home insurance. I don't have access to these details, therefore they will not discuss his policy with me.

So you think your abusive ex would have bothered to take your name off/ advised them of a change in payment details for you?

When you pay for insurance you agree that the broker/ insurer can retain the card details and use them to take future payments. If you are using someone elses card then you have to warrant that they have given you permission to do the same. It would appear that this was done and you were happy with it at the time.

Obviously when you split it was at this point that you should have informed the broker or your bank/ card issuer that you were withdrawing your consent to the continuous payment authority. Whilst its understandable that this may not have been at the top of your to do list at the time it was really up to you to look after your best interest rather than assuming your abusive ex would.

A notification of the renewal will have been sent but as you say, itll have been sent to the address they have on file which wont have been yours.

Ultimately if you are not a policyholder anymore/ cannot pass data protection with the broker then you're going to have to tackle it via your bank. If they have refused a chargeback then they are likely to refused a S75 claim too because what grounds are there to argue that the broker breached the terms?

Youre probably better off either hoping to get a more sympathetic person on the phone over doing a chargeback or putting in a complaint and threatening to go to the FOS against your bank in the hope that they do the maths that a £500 fee that all banks have to pay for every complaint that goes to the FOS, win or lose, isnt worth paying when you're only arguing over £180. That said, not all banks/ insurer/ brokers decide on which complaints to defend or pay purely on economics

Your line of arguement with your bank presumably is that you only gave your ex permission for a one off payment and not for the broker to retain the details. Whilst you accept the broker hasnt done anything wrong but your ex did by warranting that they had your permission it still doesnt make it an authorised payment. Obviously this falls down if it was a joint account or you did put the details in the website etc yourself

Hooli

Hi InsideInsurance and thanks for the info.

When i say about notification of change in circumstances, what i mean is, when a renewal comes through it states you must notify them of any change in circumstances. Therefore, when he had the renewal 4 weeks ago, he was legally obliged to inform them of the change. As he hasn't and he has continued to agree for them to charge my card, surely that renders the insurance null and void.

Could this also be fraudulent activity on his behalf as he has effectively continued a contract in his name with my payment details without my consent. Isn't there still a 14 day cooling off period?

stugib

Hooli wrote: »

When i say about notification of change in circumstances, what i mean is, when a renewal comes through it states you must notify them of any change in circumstances. Therefore, when he had the renewal 4 weeks ago, he was legally obliged to inform them of the change. As he hasn't and he has continued to agree for them to charge my card, surely that renders the insurance null and void.

The information they're interested to calculate a premium, versus who pays are different things.

He may well have told them all the material changes - now single, different address, removed you as named driver if it had been car insurance, whatever, but that doesn't mean you were no longer willing to pay for his insurance as a third party.

InsideInsurance

Hooli wrote: »

Hi InsideInsurance and thanks for the info.

When i say about notification of change in circumstances, what i mean is, when a renewal comes through it states you must notify them of any change in circumstances. Therefore, when he had the renewal 4 weeks ago, he was legally obliged to inform them of the change. As he hasn't and he has continued to agree for them to charge my card, surely that renders the insurance null and void.

Could this also be fraudulent activity on his behalf as he has effectively continued a contract in his name with my payment details without my consent. Isn't there still a 14 day cooling off period?

Its predominately contractually required not legally though failure to notify MAY become fraud if it was intentional

What changes has or hasnt he told them? The only thing you know is that the payment has gone through on your card. An insurer wouldnt void the policy for not informing them that the CPA has been withdrawn but only for non-payment for which there would be a chase process before they actually cancel it.

You could argue that its "fraud" but that is between you and him and not between you and the insurer. Fraud of cause requires intent and if he just "forgot" you paid for it last year then it wouldnt be fraud but possibly carelessness of not checking the payment details on the renewal form (which only tends to be the last 4 digits anyway). All of this of cause points to you getting him to give you the money back but based on prior comments it doesnt look like you'd be wanting to do that.

There will be a 14 day cooling off period if the policyholder wishes to cancel the policy however they can still charge for time on cover and a cancellation fee for terminating the policy early.

Hooli

Correct, I didn't want to contact my ex, that can of worms is going to remain firmly sealed. I don't know whether it was intentional or not, he was always very good with being on top of his finances.

Well, i decided, rather than pre-empting what would happen, all i could do was try. So, i phoned the insurance company and told them my situation. I was expecting a closed door but I have been very pleasantly surprised, my payment is being refunded today. The lady I spoke with was very understanding, she found the policy, listened to my predicament and agreed that as payment this year had only just been taken, she would refund the whole amount, without any quibble. All this and she didn't divulge any details regarding the policy or policy holder.

One thing i will say is, i had to keep in my head that the person i spoke to is not emotionally involved and doesn't know my ex so all i could do is give her a good impression of me. I was very calm, polite and was very thankful for her help. I will be following it up with a letter confirming my conversation, paying compliments and also advising them i request my cc details be removed from their system.

I have taken on board all the advise given here regarding my situation, a hard lesson to learn. I shan't be quite so free with my cc details but my faith has been restored in call centre staff (some anyway). I have been quite stupid really (you can all agree, i'm sure you're nodding your heads ).

Thank you all for your advise, this is a great place to be. You've all helped me save my money (and sanity).

Have a great weekend.
:T

bod1467

Also contact your bank (if you haven't already) to get that CPA deleted. If they say they can't, demand to speak with someone higher up ... the law regarding CPAs changed at least 2 years ago I believe.

A couple of related links:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/recurring-payments
http://www.fca.org.uk/news/continuous-payment-authorities-your-right-to-cancel

InsideInsurance

Hooli wrote: »

I have been quite stupid really (you can all agree, i'm sure you're nodding your heads ).

Thank you all for your advise, this is a great place to be. You've all helped me save my money (and sanity).

Glad you got a good outcome.

I dont think that going through all the CPAs you have set up against every card you have is at the top of many people's to do list when they are dealing with the breakdown of a relationship. Even if it does eventually get up the list then its compounded by the lack of visibility of what CPAs you have setup and many banks denying you can cancel them from their end.

InsideInsurance

bod1467 wrote: »

the law regarding CPAs changed at least 2 years ago I believe.

No laws involved, from the best of my knowledge, and certainly its been much longer than 2 years ago as it was about 6-7 years ago that I did a project on the card updater service and one of the responses for a decline is CPA withdrawn and we did get a number of those responses straight away so wasnt just there for future use.

The whole purpose of the card updater service was to try and move CPAs closer to DDs but the banking industry were running terribly behind their own timescales. I remember when we did ours Streamline had only just implemented it and we were to be only the second user of the service despite it in theory having been compulsory under the Visa and Mastercard network rules 6 months or so before we went live.