Cancellation of car insurance

Saxon860

Two days ago, I tried to arrange insurance for my car. Debenham's gave the best quote so I went to their website and filled in the details. After supplying my debit card details I got a message saying that the payment had been rejected and I was dumped back to square one. After seeming to get nowhere I decided to go elsewhere for my insurance and soon had it arranged via the RAC. Yesterday, I found an email from Debenham's acknowledging receipt of my premium for the year so I emailed them explaining the mistake and asking for my payment to be refunded. Their reply said I had to ring their Sales department but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to do so I emailed them again. This time, I was told to send a (third) email to their Cancellations department. I have now had an emailed reply telling me that they can cancel the insurance but at a cost of £35. As I don't think the mistake was mine, have they any right to do this?

dunstonh

Put what you have said here to their complaints team and see what the outcome is. The complaints team can resolve issues and make decisions that the front line staff at the call centre cannot.

Quentin

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

simonineaston

I recently cancelled car insurance with a company I had bought my car insurance from for the last few years. Although the cancelation happened sucessfully, I found it mildly unpleasant as the the person at the call centre was quite persistant in her efforts to get me to discuss my reasons for leaving (quite my own business as far as I'm concerned and if they're that keen to keep my business, perhaps they ought to try tempting me by offering me favourable renewal quotes, instead of hiking my premium year on year...). Thinking I was free of their tentacles after the cancelation letter arrived, they clobbered me with an email sent about my 'lapsed' policy - clever use of that word lapsed, implying that my decsion to stop buying their product was somehow a mistake or oversight! Cheeky b****rs!! Not going back to them!

keith1950

When you don't want to accept a renewal quote you should always ask them to let the policy lapse . If you ask them to cancel some over eager customer service reps will start quoting cancellation fees.
If you have a look at a dictionary at the many possible meaning of the word lapse you will see , that as a verb rather than as a noun , it is indeed a fitting word to use .

TheInsideGuy

simonineaston - with all due respect why on earth do you think any company that is losing business wouldn't ask why? If you sold your car and then the buyer wanted to return it - would you ask why? Or just think "well that's none of my business i wont ask" the insurer has a right to ask, yes you don't HAVE to tell them however you cant get the hump when they want to ask why.