Admiral Car Insurance - Unfair Admin Fee

Nasqueron

While the fee sucks, the question of how long you held a license should always be interpreted as how long since you passed and received a driver's license, not how long since you applied for a provisional. The provisional can be held from 15 years 9 months and it can be held until you are 70 without expiring yet you could not even drive a car until you were 17 As such, if you passed your test after 9 months of lessons starting from 17th birthday you would state you had the license for basically 1 day, not 2 years! I doubt many people have been caught out

You would rarely, if ever, be applying for insurance in your own name on a car as the main driver without a license as you cannot drive it, you would be insuring as a learner in that period.

InsideInsurance

Nasqueron wrote: »

While the fee sucks, the question of how long you held a license

In this case its more clear cut and requires a lot less interpretation

Question 1 is: What type of license do you have?
Question 2 is: How long have you held this license?

It is explicitly sequential questions and explicitly "this" license not "a" license.

rs65

weejangus wrote: »

Interesting thing is, the "Category B Valid From Date" doesn't actually show the date you passed your test. Mine, for example, shows my Category B as valid from March 2003 when I actually passed my test in July 2001. No idea why.

Mine shows the date I passed my test - against 7 (all) categories shown. The paper bit shows provisional entitlement from my 17th birthday against 2 categories.

Nasqueron

InsideInsurance wrote: »

In this case its more clear cut and requires a lot less interpretation

Question 1 is: What type of license do you have?
Question 2 is: How long have you held this license?

It is explicitly sequential questions and explicitly "this" license not "a" license.

I did have a look but couldn't get to that section of the quote stage without putting in all the details like my address

I also didn't want to insult the OP by pointing out the question on the license is obviously for the driving license - you could in theory register for a provisional at 15 years 9 months, then not pass a test until you were 65 years 9 months but you wouldn't say you held a license for 50 years

weejangus

Thanks for the replys all.

Just to update, Admiral initially refused to remove the fee however, a further email based on comments received here resulted in them agreeing to remove it.

I appreciate all the replys and also thoughts around Admirals questioning and thanks for taking the time to reply.

Lets be honest, no one is perfect and mistakes are made. My wife looked at the wrong date and Admiral felt it prudent to charge her £30 in admin fees. Does that sound fair? That's what really got to me. The difference in premium for that error was litterally a few pounds. How can they justify a £30 fee?

I get that fee's need to be applied at times but they really should be in propoprtion to the work involved. Had Admiral charged a fee that they could justify, we might never have escalated it.

Anyhoo, a good result as far as we're concerned. We'll know to be a little more careful in future too.

Cheers,

J

dacouch

Perhaps they justify to cover the additional costs they incur employing staff to check the information supplied by their customers. The customers making the unintentional and intentional mistakes bearing the costs of this rather than the costs being passed to the customers who had declared their details correctly

InsideInsurance

weejangus wrote: »

The difference in premium for that error was litterally a few pounds. How can they justify a £30 fee?

I get that fee's need to be applied at times but they really should be in propoprtion to the work involved.

So which do you want it proportional to? The amount of work or the additional premium? You could do a change of vehicle to one with a lot of mods that will take much longer on the phone to sort but could result in a premium refund if ultimately you've down graded your car.

In practice most mid term adjustments represent approximately equal work and so the difference in costs would be small. You'd inevitably then open up arguments about if the agent you actually spoke to was a quick enough typer or why when two couples get married and call to change their name that Mrs Smith gets charged less than Mrs Aurielisandrov

A simple flat rate is the easiest solution.

dunstonh

The difference in premium for that error was litterally a few pounds. How can they justify a £30 fee?

Where do you draw the line. Do you charge someone £2.50 if they create little work but someone else £250 if they create a lot. If you charge by time/work done, the someone venting about a charge would actually end up paying more of a charge based on the time they are on the phone.

Having a fixed fee is a clean way of doing things and much easier to disclose.

weejangus

dacouch wrote: »

Perhaps they justify to cover the additional costs they incur employing staff to check the information supplied by their customers. The customers making the unintentional and intentional mistakes bearing the costs of this rather than the costs being passed to the customers who had declared their details correctly

To be honest, I'd expect any company to pay their staff salaries from the sales of their product / services. That’s what the vast majority of companies do. Why would an insurance company be any different? If I call my bank and ask them to change my address, overdraft limit, order a new card, etc, they don't charge me a fee to cover the staffs wages. On the flip side, I may go years without making any changes with my bank but you can bet your bottom dollar they will still use some of the profit made from my custom to cover their staffs salaries.

InsideInsurance wrote: »

So which do you want it proportional to? The amount of work or the additional premium?

As I stated, proportionate to "the work involved". I didn't imply that we time how long it takes to make each individual change to a policy and charge accordingly. I was merely trying to get across that it doesn't cost Admiral, on average, £30 to make a change. So why is the admin fee set at £30? I don't think that is proportionate to the work involved to make a change to a policy. I suspect that these "Admin Fees" will be a nice little earner for insurance companies. Just my humble opinion, but if you're happy paying £30 any time you need to make a small change to your policy then be my guest. Personally, I'll challange that fee (and by doing so, I've just saved my wife £30 - This is Money Saving Expert afterall! )

dunstonh

To be honest, I'd expect any company to pay their staff salaries from the sales of their product / services.

So, you would rather everyone's annual premiums are higher every year then?

That model does still exist for some insurers with no admin fees (higher premium/no admin fee). However, for those that dont have many admin events, that is a more expensive model.

That’s what the vast majority of companies do.

No it is not. Most insurers are on the explicit charged model now and have been for some time.

It is a model that the regulator prefers. Indeed, it has forced many financial services transactions to be priced that way. i.e. those that create the work pay for it rather than have a packaged price that everyone pays whether they use the services or not.

I was merely trying to get across that it doesn't cost Admiral, on average, £30 to make a change. So why is the admin fee set at £30?

Actually, it is the averaging of admin tasks that has created the figure of £30.