Auto renew Sheilas Wheels

InsideInsurance

David_InsDef wrote: »

I'd argue that there's a reasonable amount of 'design' goes into the process (by insurance providers) that encourages that type of automaton behaviour in consumers.

There is the argument that consumers could / should be given some penalty-free time after the event to fully digest what they've signed up for; but then we all know about the huge cash cow that is the cancellation fee......

The lack of reading T&Cs is by no means exclusive to insurers and a lot of website flow/design comes from agencies that are not insurance specific.

The argument would have to be should rather than could. The problem with not having cancellation penalties is that people buy your insurance to get their car out the pound and then immediately cancel it. I did some work for one of the last large insurers to introduce cancellation charges and if you mapped the short term cancellation rate -v- time you could spot each time one of their competitors had introduced cancellation fees by the marked jump in rate. It also identified a group of people that were buying and cancelling every ~10 days thus having free insurance (they used to charge neither a fee nor for time on cover)

Whatever the period is will also kill the industry for temp insurance under that timescale as people will just buy annual policies and cancel rather than pay the inflated short term rates.

We would all also have to stomach an increase in premium to cover those setup costs that the fee covers at the moment for those that cancel within the decided on period.

50Twuncle

Sheilas Wheels appear to have appalling Customer Services - despite my emailing them as soon as I took out the policy, 11 months ago and receiving confirmation that they would cancel any autorenew - they are still planning on carrying this out
I emailed them yesterday and was (logically) asked to prove I was who I said I am (birth date and date of house build) followed by another request (policy number and car reg number !!) - which I gave them - NO FURTHER RESPONSE !!
They are aware of my disability (no speech) - so why are they messing me around ?

*Scarlett

I don't think it's unreasonable of them to ask for the policy number and the car reg that you wish to lapse. Eg if you had 2 policies they would want to know which one.

I realise this is not your circumstance but they are hardly asking you to jump through hoops.

The first questions were probably DPA checks which are for your security - now they want to confirm the policy that you want to lapse.

This is easy to resolve - it will take you 2 minutes to email the info they are asking for.

50Twuncle

*Scarlett wrote: »

I don't think it's unreasonable of them to ask for the policy number and the car reg that you wish to lapse. Eg if you had 2 policies they would want to know which one.

I realise this is not your circumstance but they are hardly asking you to jump through hoops.

The first questions were probably DPA checks which are for your security - now they want to confirm the policy that you want to lapse.

This is easy to resolve - it will take you 2 minutes to email the info they are asking for.

I did provide them with the info requested (both lot) - on Friday - but no further response has been received from them !!

cajef

50Twuncle wrote: »

I did provide them with the info requested (both lot) - on Friday - but no further response has been received from them !!

There are two days called Saturday and Sunday that follow Friday, you can hardly expect a reply on those days, or maybe you were expecting an instant reply.

50Twuncle

cajef wrote: »

There are two days called Saturday and Sunday that follow Friday, you can hardly expect a reply on those days, or maybe you were expecting an instant reply.

No - but I emailed them on Friday morning and (to start with) received a reply within minutes - I gave them all the ID details requested and had assumed that a simple YES would be forthcoming - but nothing was received !!!