Direct Line Website Fails

gwynfil

My husband and I have been a car insurance customer with Direct Line for 10 years or more. Their prices seem fair and the policies good. However, what have they done to their website? We thought, with the Corona Virus we would be very modern and pay online! Wow. This would save us having to expend money on our phone and we could renew our car insurance quickly. We were not asking for a discount. We have had a lovey paper quote sent, which we appreciate. It's all clear and good. However, what the heck is the point of the Direct Line website? We log in to our account and there are no details regarding our policy or new quote- nothing basically. They sent us a renewal email- so as I knew it was legit, we clicked the link. Nothing about our policy from that link. We have to fill in everything like a new customer and they don't need out policy number. Ludicrous.
I'd be interested to hear from Direct Line why they have a website with no customer info regarding insurance accounts or quotes or renewals. We had the debit card ready to renew and they have made it so difficult. 

Sandtree

If you want to hear from Direct Line you would be better phoning them or using their Live Chat... don't think they have a representative on this board.

Without doubt you used to be able to log into your account and accept a renewal quote if you weren't on auto-renewal but that was many years ago

gwynfil

Thank-you for your reply. I thought it would be so easy. Account, login, retrieve quote or account/policy details and pay. Looks like I will have to phone or look elsewhere. 

Sandtree

gwynfil said:

Thank-you for your reply. I thought it would be so easy. Account, login, retrieve quote or account/policy details and pay. Looks like I will have to phone or look elsewhere. 

If you started a company today with a clean slate then probably.

Reality is many companies built their core systems before the world wide web was even created let alone popular. Whilst hardware has been upgraded and more modern bits bolted to it the core was built when it just wasnt a consideration for the need to deal with 24/7 high volume traffic, self servicing and everything else we have today. Hell, some core systems lock down over night to do batch jobs still.

Not that long ago a former insurance company client at 6am copied policy details from the mainframe to a database behind the website. That enabled customers to see their policy online but nothing that had changed that day over the phone etc. You could only make changes online that never make any pricing difference (eg change your name or title) but all that really did was update the database behind the website and send an email to customer services who would key the actual change on the mainframe and issue revised documents from there. An illusion of self service held together by sellotape and string

The other concern is data privacy... a complex issue with conflicting priorities for all. Can result in either functionality not being offered or it having over zealous safeguards that can stop things working. 

On top of that, IT can mess up at times.

davidmcn

gwynfil said:

Looks like I will have to phone or look elsewhere. 

Money-saving advice is usually to phone anyway so you can haggle, not just pay the first figure they offer.

AnnieMoss11

I looked into a quote online for my mother who was paying $34 a month for this SAME policy for god knows how many years!!! (looking into that right now with her bank for an online complaint). 

When I submitted her information online I used "Ms" as her title in one quote and "Mrs" in another - I received two quite different quotes by using Ms vs Mrs - how is this even LEGAL!!!!!

Sandtree

Whats more confusing is that they are quoting in dollars.

Your chosen title isnt a protected characteristic under discrimination law and so insurers are perfectly entitled to using it as a rating factor if they so choose. Your mohter is entitled to make a complaint if she so wishes but ultimately its an unadvised sale so they simply quote a price and your mother decides if she wants to pay it or not, the ombudsman generally dont look at pricing complaints as its a purely commercial matter.