Car seized for no insurance

akkers

I know a young man (lets call him Dave) who had group insurance. The main insured missed a payment so the insurance was cancelled Friday midnight. He managed call them and make the payment on Saturday. He checked on his online account and it showed that the insurance was back live. However, it turns out that they did not update the national/police insurance database.
On Sat evening Dave was driving around (unaware of what had happened) and was stopped by the police for no insurance. He showed them the certificate but they said the car was showing not insured and duly seized it. Dave could not do much at the weekend as everything was closed. On Monday he got a new insurance policy and went to police station but got sent from one station to another. Eventually he went to div HQ where they looked at his docs. Instead of checking his docs and police database, they called he new insurance company and told them that the car in question had been seized and that this young man was going to get 6 points. Very nice indeed - talk of giving people a chance. The new insurance company telephoned Dave immidiately and told him that his insurance was cancelled. So he could not get his car released. I am not sure what happened since then.
The old insurance company was contacted and they said that although they received the payment they could not process it as it was a weekend. What an execuse that is. These days there is no waiting of bacs, payments go in seconds. They had in effect aken payment but not provided the service. IMO they are in breach of contract.
Now, Dave has done nothing wrong, ha had always had correct docs. He is the victim of an admin error but it looks like he is going to get the book thrown at him big time.
Any advice would be appreciated.

BeenThroughItAll

If 'Dave' had an active policy and certificate, per 'his online account', why did he feel the need to go and get 'a new insurance policy' before going to the cop-shop? Why not, on the Monday, simply get the insurer who had the live policy to help deal with the issue?


Either something's missing from this story, or it's not entirely true.

glentoran99

and when he got the new insurance how did he answer the question "have you ever had insurance cancelled"

Manxman_in_exile

Yeah. On the Monday why didn't he contact his existing insurer rather than getting a new policy with someone else?

AdrianC

He was driving without insurance. Being nicked is one of the better outcomes in that situation.

When he bought the new insurance, did he tell the insurer that his car was currently impounded, and that he was facing prosecution for driving whilst uninsured? Or did he lie when asked that particular question...?

Most new policies explicitly exclude their use to free previously-impounded vehicles, so the police were correct to check whether this one did or not - and, as it happened, it did not. A better solution would have been for him to use the policy which was in force at the time of the seizure - if it was just a delay in re-adding the policy to MID, the insurer would have been happy to confirm that he was covered, the car would have been released, and the prosecution would have been discontinued.

DKLS

Does Dave need his hand holding when he goes to the shops?

Marvel1

Not sure why you bought a new insurance policy with a new company instead of contacting existing one.

Silver-Surfer_2

So Dave paid for insurance of Saturday and had a certificate of insurance. He was stopped later that day and produced a certificate of insurance.

So potentially this seizure was unlawful. But he accepted it or it didn't happen like that. Why did Dave not show the police his policy online? He'd already checked it after that day.

Then what does he do, he appears to make a false declaration to obtain a second policy. Takes that to the police and they do their checks, speak to the insurance and then he gets a second policy cancelled. Dave accepts it and walks out of the nick, dies he go back to the original company? After all he had a valid policy with them.

Why is Dave on a group policy?
Who originally took this out?
Did Dave okay for the who group on Saturday?

Dave's probably going to be uninsurable if this is true.

OP why not got back to Dave and get the full story?

force_ten

akkers wrote: »

Now, Dave has done nothing wrong, ha had always had correct docs. He is the victim of an admin error but it looks like he is going to get the book thrown at him big time.
Any advice would be appreciated.

so you consider driving without insurance as doing nothing wrong ?

somebody missed a payment which resulted in the insurance policy being cancelled, dave then tried to make a payment and resurrect the cancelled policy which for whatever reason failed so when the car was seized he was driving without insurance

as already said there is somthing odd here in that on the monday he went looking for new insurance to release the car from the pound rather than contacting the company that he mistakenly thought he was insured with and who he had made a payment to on the saturday morning

so he will end up with an IN10 for driving with no insurance and a big fine of £300.00 up 6-8 penalty points which he will have to declare to insurers for the next 5 years and on top of that he should also declare two cancelled insurance policies


Many people are charged and found guilty of driving without insurance because of an innocent misunderstanding like a missed payment, but because driving without insurance is classed as an absolute offence then there is no defence, if you are caught without insurance for whatever reason then you will be prosecuted

AdrianC

force_ten wrote: »

Many people are charged and found guilty of driving without insurance because of an innocent misunderstanding like a missed payment, but because driving without insurance is classed as an absolute offence then there is no defence, if you are caught without insurance for whatever reason then you will be prosecuted

That's not quite true.
If you're driving in the line of employment, the employer is responsible for insurance, AND you have reasonable grounds to believe that the vehicle is insured, then that's a legitimate defence.

Futuristic

You know a lot about Dave, are you dave?