Swinton car insurance rip off

toonbaz

I have been with swinton since December and pay around £33 p/m. This week I bought a new car, it's a more expensive car but in a much lower insurance group, I'd checked comparison sites and could expect insurance to be similar.
I phoned swinton tonight to change car, they advised it would be a £25 fee (fair enough) but also that my premium would increase by £850 for rest of policy! With 7 months remaining this would increase my payments to over £150 p/m. So basically they wanted to quadruple my payment, I advised this was ridiculous and said I would have to cancel as I knew I could insure for less than £400 per year.
They were happy to cancel but only after charging me a £50 cancellation fee!

Is it reasonable for me to still be charged the cancelation fee when they unreasonably hiked the price up knowing that I would never renew. It seems like a convenient way of making extra cash out of me.

OnanTheBarbarian

Cancellation fee probably features in your policy terms (which you have agreed to by taking out the cover with them), so they will be entitled to charge it.

Just put it down to experience that insurers just love an admin and cancellation fee and that a dry bumming for pressing a few buttons is the norm.

toonbaz

I was aware of the cancellation fee in the policy so would expect that it just seems totally unreasonable to increase price 400% to make me cancel.
It's made worse by the fact comparison sites show swinton would insure that vehicle for £44 p/m

dacouch

It's not as simple as that.

Swinton are not an Insurer, they're an agent who deal with a number of different companies. So there's a very good chance the quote with Swintons was with a different Insurer than the Insurer you're currently covered by.

As well as taking into account the grouping of a car, Insurers also rate on the age of the car. The older a car is the cheaper the Insurance is due to it being cheaper to replace.

So when you swop cars to a newer car but lower grouped car it's not that unusual for it to actually cost more.

I'm not a fan of Swintons...

toonbaz

I actually expected it to go up slightly due to the value, but when comparison sites show me loads of companies including swinton offering insurance for between £35-55 per month compared to the £150 per month quoted over the phone. Even the most expensive policy on comparison sites was far less than 150 p/m.

rudekid48

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

Cancellation fee probably features in your policy terms (which you have agreed to by taking out the cover with them), so they will be entitled to charge it.

Just put it down to experience that insurers just love an admin and cancellation fee and that a dry bumming for pressing a few buttons is the norm.

I'm not convinced that insurers are the worst in the "dry bumming" stakes. I sent a MS Outlook meeting invite to a Solicitor which he duly accepted within about 30 seconds. My subsequent itemised bill included a charge of £20+VAT for "Arrangement of meeting".

dacouch

toonbaz wrote: »

I actually expected it to go up slightly due to the value, but when comparison sites show me loads of companies including swinton offering insurance for between £35-55 per month compared to the £150 per month quoted over the phone. Even the most expensive policy on comparison sites was far less than 150 p/m.

Swintons are not an Insurer, they deal with lots of Insurers and quote you the cheapest company based on the details WHEN YOU TAKE OUT THE COVER.

The quote you received from Swintons on a comparison site is almost certainly with a different Insurer.

You mentioned all the companies that are cheaper than Swintons, these will be the companies who were more expensive than Swintons when you took out cover. Some Insurers are cheap on some cars but expensive on others.

I've heard a few reports that a well worded, concise & polite letter headed "Official Complaint" about the cancellation fee will often get them to waive the £50

OnanTheBarbarian

rudekid48 wrote: »

I'm not convinced that insurers are the worst in the "dry bumming" stakes. I sent a MS Outlook meeting invite to a Solicitor which he duly accepted within about 30 seconds. My subsequent itemised bill included a charge of £20+VAT for "Arrangement of meeting".

What a raasquart!