Hastings renewals twice going rate

LisaWordbird

I'm furious right now because I've just been stiffed for a £45 cancellation fee to get out of my Hastings motorbike insurance policy.
I checked the going rate for my policy and it was £70+ while Hastings had automatically renewed it at £160+
I checked because the renewal quote they gave me for my car insurance was MORE than last year's price with them (no claims in the meantime). When I ran it through a comparison website (Money Supermarket) there were plenty of quotes at half the renewal price.
So the moral of this tale is to check your insurance every year and frankly, avoid Hastings' renewals. I am SO unimpressed.

BoGoF

Only person you should be furious at is yourself. The time to check your insurance is a month or so before renewal.

Quotes for new customers at other insurers are not the 'going rate', they are normally discounted to lure you in......as Hastings did last year.

AdrianC

So you let the policy autorenew... THEN checked to see if the premium was competitive?

Aylesbury_Duck

Insurance company offer best prices to new customers and rely on existing customer inertia to subsidise it shocker.

Scrapit

I always request to opt out of autorenew when buying insurance.

Ectophile

The only way to get a decent renewal quote from Hastings Direct is to phone them up and point out how expensive they are this year. They will magically find a better quote. If you let them auto-renew, it will keep going up.


In the end I got fed up with playing their silly game and switched both of my cars elsewhere.

chrisw

Ectophile wrote: »

The only way to get a decent renewal quote from Hastings Direct is to phone them up and point out how expensive they are this year. They will magically find a better quote. If you let them auto-renew, it will keep going up.


In the end I got fed up with playing their silly game and switched both of my cars elsewhere.

Yeah, they managed to reduce my son's premium by £165 when he phoned up to tell them not to auto renew as he had a cheaper quote.

Why couldn't they offer that in the first place?!

walwyn1978

chrisw wrote: »

Yeah, they managed to reduce my son's premium by £165 when he phoned up to tell them not to auto renew as he had a cheaper quote.

Why couldn't they offer that in the first place?!

Insurance companies make a good chunk of their money by investing the profit of their policy sales in share portfolios. If you take the auto-renew option they have more money to put in their investment fund that month...

Aylesbury_Duck

chrisw wrote: »

Yeah, they managed to reduce my son's premium by £165 when he phoned up to tell them not to auto renew as he had a cheaper quote.

Why couldn't they offer that in the first place?!

Because if they did, they'd make less money. Remember, lazy customers subsidise those of us who actually bother to shop around. Don't be too encouraging!

Geodark

Ectophile wrote: »

The only way to get a decent renewal quote from Hastings Direct is to phone them up and point out how expensive they are this year. They will magically find a better quote. If you let them auto-renew, it will keep going up.


In the end I got fed up with playing their silly game and switched both of my cars elsewhere.

yup, strangely enough mine went down by over half, near on £400 when i rang them. Definitely pays to give the call - only took 5 mins.

elsien

It's not just Hastings who do this but you do have sufficient notice of the auto renewal to cancel and shop around elsewhere.