Cancellation of renewal notices

brisser

Is there anything being done to stop incumbent car insurance policy companies from automatically renewing your policy, using existing payment details from the last method of payment (debit card in my case) without having to phone them to proactively request then not to renew. Last week I renewed my insurance using a comparison site , as I do every year and got it with an other company for £60 less than than my renewal quote from my existing insurer. We all know there is no loyalty and they always sting existing customers in order to incentivise new customers with low intoroducttory offers. Hastings, my existing insurer refused to accept my cancellation request via email and never answered my question, why does it ha d to be by phone and they refuse to do it via email. I emailed them as a courtesy and I realise that they want you to phone so they will match other others and try to keep you, but I don't like the fact you hang on the phone for ages trying to get thru. Fortunately, the payment details they have is for an expired card, so they cannot take payment for renewal, but why is there not legislation that stops them from renewing policies, unless you contact them to authorise it and why not accept emails to do either, to avoid their timewasting on the phone. There own quote on a comparison site was £50 cheaper than what they quoting in my renewal email they sent. Why in nothing being done to stop this known unacceptable practise.

Quentin

You will have agreed to their autorenew conditions and how to stop it happening when first taking out your policy

Whenever you are not happy with your insurance company the route to go down is a complaint in line with their complaints procedure.

Then if you are not happy with the reply or they ignore you for 8 weeks you can escalate to the FOS for their adjudication at no cost to you

Zorillo

I'd bet more customers forget to shop around and benefit from auto renewal than remember to shop around but can't be bothered to cancel the auto renewal properly.

TheInsideGuy

auto renewal is there to protect you. if you forgot about it one year and carried on driving you would be blaming the insurer for not renewing it. from an insiders prospective we cant win. also just because you complain about auto renewal doesnt mean anything will actually happen. it would have been agreed too upon inception of the policy

Aretnap

+1. Auto renewal is annoying at times (the time I spent listening to Admiral's hold music one year is 20 minutes of my life that I'll never get back) but on the whole it is probably a good thing. If you're organised enough to remember your renewal date then phoning them up to cancel is a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. And if you're not organised enough to remember your renewal date then it's better to have it auto renew than end up uninsured.

Certainly I wished that my breakdown cover had auto renewed a few years ago when I called them from the roadside to find that my policy had lapsed a couple of weeks previously...

fwor

-1. It's pretty obvious that Auto-renewal is massively profitable for the insurance companies. It's not because customers are clamouring for it - the insurance companies are the ones behind the rise in auto-renewal being built into the process.

IMO it would be far, far better if they were required to offer the choice of whether or not to take auto-renewal as part of every online application, rather than forcing it on us. It's a box that I would never tick.

fiisch

Insurers are required to auto-renew. It's not some hidden scam or trick to fool you.


You can ask for it to be switched off from the outset if you prefer, but it was introduced following the requirement to have continuous insurance on your vehicle.

[Deleted User]

If auto renewal wasn't offered can you imagine the number of threads on here from the same people who moan about it but then would moan that they "forgot" to renew and have been done for driving uninsured?

antrobus

brisser wrote: »

.... Why in nothing being done to stop this known unacceptable practise.

case study 4
Mr M was pulled over by the police for driving without insurance. He complained that he hasn’t received any renewal notices - and that his policy should have been set up to auto-renew.

The insurer sent us screen-shots showing the date they’d sent out renewal notices. They also sent us phone recordings from when Mr M took out his policy. They’d offered him the option of auto-renewals, and he’d clearly said no. In the circumstances, we decided the insurer hadn’t done anything wrong.

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/cancelling-renewing-car-insurance-case-studies.html

DevilsAdvocate1

fiisch wrote: »

Insurers are required to auto-renew. It's not some hidden scam or trick to fool you.


You can ask for it to be switched off from the outset if you prefer, but it was introduced following the requirement to have continuous insurance on your vehicle.

That's not right. I had to ring up last year and I told them clearly I did not want it to renew. My renewal notice has just come through and it states clearly that if I don't ring them then it will NOT be renewed automatically.


They want just over £800. When I go through Go Compare I'm getting quotes around the £300 mark, so the renewal price is massively inflated. I think they are relying on customers not remembering and then auto renewing at a really high price.


I also had a problem a few years back with Green Flag. They auto renewed a breakdown policy which was on a specific car. I no longer owned the car so had no intention of renewing. I didn't receive any emails or paperwork to tell me it would automatically renew. The first I realised was went my credit card bill was higher than I expected, so I went through my bill. When I rang to complain I was told that it was not outside the 14 day cooling off period so I had to pay a large admin fee. I did get a full refund in the end after I asked why I would want a policy for a car which I did not own (and therefore could never claim on). Was a bit of a battle though.

csgohan4

It's important to diarise when your insurance is about to expire so you can shop around, anything else you only have yourself to blame.