Sentinel Gold Renewal

looeess

After recently upgrading my Lloyds account to include Vantage I am suddenly being sent renewal notices from Sentinel for their "Gold" insurance policy.

I have had two letters from them so far, the first saying they are renewing the policy, the second saying they are having problems renewing as they don't seem to have my correct credit card details to charge the fee to.

Well, that will be because I never gave them any details.

I haven't had a policy with them for many years, how can they suddenly be renewing one?!

I'm waiting to see if they send me anything else...

beagle

Same thing for me - they wanted £80, up from £50 3 years ago. Phoned up to not renew/see what they would offer and after I explained that I didn't need the additional level of cover they said that they would process the cancellation and they'd confirm in writing. Wonder if there will be an "offer" then?

Halifax's Card Care Household policy at £49/3 years seems my way forward!

mariedem

Another experience to report with Sentinel Gold/ Plus. I received a Renewal Notice for £80 for 3 yrs and although unhappy went along with it - no time to investigate.
Then I try and register online only to find they are not properly set up yet! Whilst going through this palava I note on their web site that they are advertising the 3yr renewal for £70. so I 'e' mail and ask why? First response is because I have Gold Plus rather than Gold. When I ask what increased benefits this gives me I get an 'e' mail asking me to phone them. I duly phone and after an unsatisfactory explanation ask to speak to a Supervisor. After having established that the web site was indeed showing £70 - she at first cld only bring up £80, she agreed to send me a cheque for £10. I am still waiting but I just think there's something a bit fishy about this, may yet decide to take it further with the appropriate authority.

hansi

On top of the £70 renewal demand, I received another mailshot today about the Safe2Go service. Now they want another £90 a year off me to cover my electronic equipment from loss/damage etc. Reading through the blurb I do not see anything about cover abroad. All this is covered by my home insurance policy in the UK and my travel insurance policy whilst abroad. Ah, but, they are also offering me an MP3 player even if I don't take the service after one month. A sprat to catch a mackerel! I guess I could buy a good mp3 player for £90. I've already got one anyway! What a rip-off!

gardening_diva

When I tried & failed to register online (several months ago) I contacted customer services. For several weeks they said that it was a technical fault. Eventually I received a phone call telling me that the online service was only for Lloyds TSB customers!
I am furious that they are discriminating their customer base in this way, and that they want me to send such sensitive info (credit card & passport details) in the post! (Phoning it through would take ages).
I have written a letter of complaint. Not holding my breath though!

view

Hi
My other half just received his renewal notice - to an address he's not lived at for about 12 years, anyway - me being a bit more mse wise than him advised him to thoroughly check he needs this first before just blindly (yes, blindly!) paying the amount.

He doesn't travel to dodgy places we have full household contents. If his card was stolen or lost would he not just call the emergency 24 hour number for Barclaycard? I might be wrong, hoever, would Barclaycard not cover any monies fraudulently taken from his lost/stolen card? Also with replacing items when travelling abroad - we always take out travel insurnace which includes personal money & luggage - wouldn't this cover this anyway?

Ok the locked out of home might be a good benefit, however, we have an emergency safe key with a very trustworthy friend (we have their 'emergency key also) - so we wouldn't use this benefit anyway....

I can't see a reason to take out Sentinel Gold - however, might be very wrong in my assumptions above - any advice anyone?

Thanks
GJ x

Squeezyp

I got my £70 Sentinel renewal, read your website and rang to cancel stating that I found the Halifax card care for £43, no arguments at all he said:-
"Ok as a loyal customer who knows Sentinel have the best product I can do it for you for £50, that is what you would want isn't it?"

Suits me, I have used them for over 10 years and they are good.

Paul.:T

Dippy_Luck

I decided this year to research whether there's any competition out there for Sentinel, mainly because I'm cheesed off about them saying they've been unable to collect the direct debit payment AGAIN (apparently some some banks cancel the mandate if it's not used more frequently than once a year, or so I'm told). Anyway, I read various threads on the MSE forums suggesting that there were several alternative firms offering cover cheaper. I checked out the Halifax Card Care and the cost was £18 per annum or £42 for 3 years, (although I'm not sure if the cover is as comprehensive as Sentinel). Still, I telephoned Sentinel and told them of my findings, they offered 3 years cover for £60, reminding me that lock cover was included with their policy. I said I've never needed lock cover and didn't ask for it in the first place. As their price was still quite a lot more than the Halifax policy, I informed them that I'd be contacting Halifax unless they could do better. I was asked to hold the line and just a few moments later the lady came back offering me three years cover for £50. I had no wish to go through the hassle of transferring all my card details to a new company, so the deal was done. Thanks to everyone for their information, it just goes to show, if you don't ask, you won't get. :beer:

ploot

gardening_diva wrote: »

When I tried & failed to register online (several months ago) I contacted customer services. For several weeks they said that it was a technical fault. <snip> I have written a letter of complaint. Not holding my breath though!

My recent (Apr'10) 'online' experience with my Sentinel Gold account began similarly - more bizarrely in some ways, as my on-line access to my old, 'manual-only' policy initially WORKED perfectly for me for a few hours -- then stopped (with the symptoms that the 'login' was accepted but the requested service was not available - their system took me to a bland adverts page.

The good news is that, after a mere 5 carefully-worded emails from me in my polite 'I'm writing this up as a Report that might just finish up elsewhere' style <g>, I'm pleased to report my policy IS now - today! - being re-jigged for use on-line.

How? Well, after my 5th email (the one I usually keep till last as it mentions Data Protection, OFT, ASA etc etc <g>), Sentinel RANG me and explained that the CAUSE of the problem was not so much that none of my cards is with LTSB as gardening_diva had suggested in her original post but simply that my policy - and thousands of other folks' of course - was still running on their 'old' computer system and, yes, they had had and have continued to have technical problems in 'porting' all these policies across to the new system - the one that enables the on-line access.

Their (by now!) very responsive, friendly and knowledgeable help-desk staff have just rung again to say they'd this morning tried - and failed - with a 'cross-your-fingers computer patch' to get specifically my policy across to the new system so, instead, they'll now undertake free-of-charge to manually re-enter all my cards etc onto a new policy which WILL ('definitely' <g>) then be available on-line, and that this new policy should be up-and-running within 24-hours (and, fear not, I will be double-checking their data-re-entry!). For admin reasons, they'll then refund the unused part of my existing 3-year policy and send me a new 3-year bill (it'll effectively be a new policy).

All sounds (very) reasonable to me. And with all that hassle for them for each such 'old' policy, I'm not surprised they're being a little coy in not offering this as a standard service to everyone affected!

I did tell them, though, that I'd be posting this here, and was assured they're fairly close now to completing a 'batch transfer across' that WILL automate their solution to this problem. So anybody else affected should now try asking them again.

Meanwhile, I will of course post here again if there are any further hiccups in MY specific case!

In summary for anybody else affected by this, ie you've tried setting-up on-line access to an 'old' Sentinel policy and, maybe, it maybe looks like it's going to work then suddenly doesn't, my advice would be simply to ASK Sentinel (pre-emptively) to CLOSE your old policy down and for them then to copy all your records across to a new one which WILL be accessible on-line, and, like I said above I would be doing for my own peace-of-mind, for you to then double-check they've done the manual re-entering 100% correctly.

Good luck!

ploot

Update 15/5/10 - all up and running, fees sorted as above, frankly I was actually IMPRESSED!

iangrimmett

My renewal came through for the uprated cover at £70.
After having read previous threads I phoned and got the cover with no loss of benefits for £60.
When I mentioned I was going to shop around and said I wouldn't use half of the new cover as it was already covered by household insurance, I got it offered at £50 and took it up!