Do I need to declare? Can I dispute?

brantheman

Hi

I had an insurance company calling me whilst in the middle of moving a couple of years ago to renew public liability insurance. As I was moving I told them to just send me a quote and that I would look at it. In all the mayhem of moving I completely forgot about the email, didn't check it and forgot all about it. Fast forward 5 months and I have a call from my old landlord to say that I had some mail. The only stuff that had gone to my old address were debt collector letters and a court summons regarding this insurance that I have never, ever agreed to! I'd never received another email chasing it, nor any further phone calls, even though they were aware I was moving and knew these details.

I panicked and paid the court costs within 28 days to get rid of it. I am now in the process of buying my own place and it is only through having to take out life/house insurance that I have suddenly realised that this cancellation could really impact on my existing insurance policies.

I have never missed a days payment of anything in my life and I still dispute that I ever took this insurance out. Surely they can't just send an email and thus you have insurance? I have never signed anything and never agreed to pay for this insurance.

So my questions are: should myself and my partner be disclosing this when we insure? And should I speak to someone further about disputing that this should ever have gone to court, particularly if it will affect further policies?

Thanks

stator

It's common for many insurance policies to have an auto-renew clause in them, so you need to check the paperwork and see if you agreed to this when you originally took out the policy

Quentin

As it stands if this policy was cancelled then the policyholder will have to disclose it. (Or if the policyholder is to be covered on someone else's policy it has to be disclosed).

You have a problem trying to overturn the ccj as you paid it which does look that you agreed you owed this sum which resulted in the cancellation - it's probably too late now, but had you got legal advice at the time you may have been able to get the judgement "set aside" and fought the case

InsideInsurance

As this was public liability insurance presumably it was business?

You will need to check with the insurers in question but in most cases personal and business classes of insurance dont impact each other. It would still cause problems if you ever want to get business insurance again.

As others have said, autorenewal is the norm and you have to proactively decline the renewal offer rather than accept it.

brantheman

It was for business but I am a sole trader. I don't think that it was under auto-renewal, the brokers phoned me several times about renewing it. Each time I fobbed them off and told them just to send me a quote because at the time I was not interested in taking another year with them.

I should have said NO to them and be done with it but I left it open and said to them to just send me a quote. It was a stupid mistake on my part, I should have contacted them and told them to remove my name from their sales list but I didn't. But I did not agree to this and even when I spoke to the broker, he said that it was my word against the guy that tried to sell me the insurance and that it wasn't them taking it to court, it was the underwriters.