MSE: News: Admiral auto-renewal insurance letters issue

Cash_Cow

Beware Admiral - they do not cover factory fitted options and will not allow you to use a manufacturer approved bodyshop...they have their own kickback back street garage guys they want you to use... Shocking.

2013yearofthehouse

Are Admiral supposed to be changing this or carrying on saying it's ok for them to be doing so?

Email received today (forwarded to me by a friend who is with them) for cover from June 2017.

"Last Year's Premium: £338
This is the premium we would have offered you last year, but is calculated using your current policy details. Please note this figure may not take into account any discount we have offered you."

"Renewal price for this year is £300" (so it actually looks £38 CHEAPER)

Actual price paid after she rang them last year was £255

Currently the cheapest she can find elsewhere is £330, so she is thinking of letting it autorenew (at the £300) for the first time in 12 years!

AdrianC

2013yearofthehouse wrote: »

"Last Year's Premium: £338
This is the premium we would have offered you last year, but is calculated using your current policy details. Please note this figure may not take into account any discount we have offered you."
...
Actual price paid after she rang them last year was £255

There's a clue in what it actually says.

That's the premium they WOULD have offered last year, for the current details (have they changed?), and is BEFORE any discounts.

2013yearofthehouse

AdrianC wrote: »

There's a clue in what it actually says.

That's the premium they WOULD have offered last year, for the current details (have they changed?), and is BEFORE any discounts.

No, no changes (well, except this year she's a year older obviously and so is her car - same car). The £338 they would have offered is indeed what they did offer and that's when she rang them and they offered the £255.

The sentence, explaining that renewal price, covers them and makes sense, but I thought the MSE article suggested that they should be putting the actual price paid on the renewal letters/emails, as that is what some companies are doing and Admiral admitted that it was only customers on an older computer system that were being shown the original renewal quote and that they were going to change it (to the actual price paid) soon? Maybe I've misunderstood....

EDIT: I've just re-read!

"These customers are in the process of being moved to the newer system, which records the premium as the figure actually paid by the customer, the spokesman said."

So basically she's just still on the old system and hasn't been moved across yet.

Curious as to why they have put her premium "down" (not actually, but the automated computer system would see this as a decrease I guess) to the point that it actually beats quotes from (presumably most) other companies, albeit an actual increase on the price she ended up paying (which was about the same for many companies) last year. The price she has paid has gone down every year since she started driving (but only by switching or haggling), so this is the first year she'll pay more than the previous years (obviously that was inevitable), but it's a bit of a jump from quotes of £220-350 last year to quotes of £330-480 this year. By comparison her sister, who lives with her, only saw an increase of £10 to her insurance last month.

Sorry, I've gone off topic and into thinking out loud territory!

Herzlos

miller wrote: »

especially as the renewal premium is taken 7 days before the renewal date.

They've almost always taken my money about 5 days after the policy started.

Even if the times Admiral quote are accurate that only leaves 14 days when really there should be a month's daylight.

That still gives you 14 days to bash some details in the comparison sites and making a few calls. If they send them out 28 days prior people would probably "do it later" and then forget.

miller wrote: »

There is implied pressure to accept the renewal quote.

Not at all; there's no pressure to take it at all.