Car insurance cancelled unfairly

stuslayer666

Hi all,

Please can you advise me on available routes for a dispute on a car insurance cancellation?
First, I have made the now obvious mistake of taking a policy from 1st Central (I know now) in March 2020. First payment was taken on credit card, and I subsequently called to set up a direct debit with them. 1st payment due at the beginning of June. June came, and they took the payment. Then the day after they took it again. And my bank told me they were due to take another 3 payments on the next three days!

I called them, to be told that they had somehow set the policy up from March 2019, and the system said I was in arrears for a years' insurance payments! I couldn't believe it. Their representative told me to cancel the direct debit and reclaim the payments through the direct debit guarantee, which I did. He told me that they couldn't reinstate the direct debit until the issue was resolved, as their system would just attempt the same thing again. I was told it might take a few days to sort as it was an IT issue and a ticket had been raised, so I left it with them.

I very quickly started receiving emails from them regarding missed payments. A week after my original call (on 9th June) I called back to get an update and reassurance about the emails regarding missed payments. I was assured that the problem was being dealt with by IT, that while there was an IT ticket raised there could be no changes to my policy, and that the emails were autogenerated so I could safely ignore them. I was also told that it could take up to 2 weeks to deal with the IT ticket due to the Covid 19 lockdown situation, all staff were working from home, etc.

A week later I called for an update, was told nothing had been done yet, it would be escalated back to IT (whatever that means) and not to worry.

I called again last week, to query about an email I received saying my insurance was at risk of being cancelled by 15th July due to non payment. I went through the whole situation again with the agent, who again reassured me that I could ignore the emails as the IT ticket was still live, so my insurance could not be cancelled. I then made an official complaint about the time it was taking to sort the issue and the lack of information I was getting when calling through. I was told I should have a response to this by Tuesday (yesterday). I have heard nothing in regards to this complaint.

Today, at 3pm, I received an email advising that my policy was cancelled with immediate effect. I called up again, and was told that it was an automatic system cancellation, even though I had been told on a number of occasions that, due to the account being under an IT support ticket, this could not happen! I demanded the policy be reinstated as they have no right under the circumstances to cancel the policy for non payment, which the agent managed to get done, by escalating to a manager while I was on the call. This agent has promised to monitor the account on a daily basis to ensure the same doesn't happen again, while the IT issue is being resolved (for which again, I could get no timescale). I have also requested a manager call back, as they say that managers won't take inbound calls. I'm promised this should happen by Monday.

I've no confidence they will be able to resolve the issue and frankly, the entire experience has been so bad that I would prefer to go with another insurer at this point. My car is vital for my work, I'm covered under business insurance for the car as required by my employer, so I cannot afford to have this happen. I'm due to restart work next week, and this has really got me worried.

What options do I have in terms of cancelling this policy myself and taking another? I don't want to have the policy cancelled on me because I understand that will give me problems in getting another insurer, which is why I demanded they reinstate the policy, but can I leave myself due to the above issues? What kind of recompense can I claim, if any, for the ridiculous situation and events that I've described? Any advice would be welcome.

onlyfoolsandparking

Sounds like a bit of a nightmare, if it were me I would cut my losses, cancel policy, go to a different insurer, get new policy problem solved but that's just me others might have different or indeed better advice.

flashg67

onlyfoolsandparking said:

Sounds like a bit of a nightmare, if it were me I would cut my losses, cancel policy, go to a different insurer, get new policy problem solved but that's just me others might have different or indeed better advice.

Personally, if you're sure it's been reinstated, cancel it yourself and go elsewhere. If they do cancel,(as opposed to you asking them to cancel) you'll have to declare it and will affect ability to get cover again and/or the cost

stuslayer666

Thanks, that's my thinking - would it be a good idea to get another policy in place before cancelling this one? And do I have sufficient grounds in the above for a cancellation? I feel that there is grounds for breach of contract but I'm not certain.

rs65

stuslayer666 said:

Thanks, that's my thinking - would it be a good idea to get another policy in place before cancelling this one? And do I have sufficient grounds in the above for a cancellation? I feel that there is grounds for breach of contract but I'm not certain.

Check your policy but you can generally cancel at any time (breach of contract is irrelevant)