Insurance help please?

tugmistress

Hi folks,
I could do with some advice of what to do next please, 
the story so far........
Back in march, about a week before lockdown we decided to finally go for a car on motability as the one i had been using was slowly getting more and more faults which would be cost prohibitive to us for it's MOT due sept. We chose a vehicle and were told back end of June, then lockdown happened and that threw a spanner into the works. When Lockdown eased we quickly did some guesstimates and came up with the end of Oct for delivery. The vehicle I had been driving gave up the ghost and we looked for another one and on sept 8th i bought and insured a new car to see me through until my motability one appeared. Just over 2 weeks later i got a call from the dealership, organised a date and the day before i cancelled my insurance on the focus.
I had had the insurance for 20 days.
I understand i have to pay the cancellation fee on the policy (£75 yuk) but i asked for a breakdown of the other costs as they were asking for £159. After asking for a breakdown, i then get a letter (email to say a letter was on their portal) stating that they had re assessed and i owed £131 and to get in touch in the next day or so to pay or set up a payment plan.
Is there something or someone out there that can help me with this to get the costs down to the cancellation fee please? 
I paid a month in advance when i took out the insurance and only had it for 20 days, i cancelled on the 20th day.
Any help gratefully received.
Thank you
Paula

neilmcl

Why cancel the insurance, why not just insure the new car on this policy?

How much was the total premium, an how do you pay, eg, monthly annually in full?

If you cancel outside the 14 day cooling off period then the insurer is entitled to recoup a percentage of the policy price. If you think they're charging too much you can make a formal complaint to them and if that doesn't resolve the matter then take it further to the FOS.

facade

neilmcl said:

Why cancel the insurance, why not just insure the new car on this policy?

Motability include insurance as part of the package, so it would be a waste of money.

Can't help with the costs, the insurer is charging the £75 cancellation, and another £56 for the short cover, but presumably they already had a pro rata 1 month payment. Is it something to do with the finance on paying monthly?

Car_54

tugmistress said:

I paid a month in advance when i took out the insurance and only had it for 20 days, i cancelled on the 20th day.

Almost certainly not - you will have paid the first instalment of an annual policy. As Facade suggests, this affects the calculations. A sizable chunk of your payment will have been interest, which is probably not refundable.

Sandtree

The insurer or broker will provide you with a breakdown in costs, depending on if it was a broker or insurer will also potentially impact the numbers.

One of the big elements is that short term insurance insurance is often rerated as if you'd bought a 20 day policy in the first place and with the typical "bulk buy discount" short term inurance is much more expensive than annual on a per day basis.

Get the breakdown of the cost and compare it to what the wordings say the costs will be... you may have short term insurance, insurer cancellation fee, broker admin fee, new customer discount cancellation amoungst other things. If you ever need short term insurance again and cannot say exactly how long it is certainly double check cancellation costs before buying! Those who are cheapest up front often, though not always, have the higher fees as this is how they get their revenue back to the level of those charging more middle of the road premiums.