Car Insurance company saying can't cover insurance after Receiving Insurance Certificate

SteveG871

I recently phoned my insurance company broker performance direct days before trading my car in for another car the car I bought was of less value and power and was told that was no problem it will be £50 for an admin fee and to phone back on the day of exchange to give a time and pay the £50 fee - this I did and traded the car and drove over 300 miles home after receiving the new document and insurance cert online - the following day after driving the car locally I received and email at almost 4pm saying that AXA could not insure the car after all and that they would have to requote and quoted over £1200 for a car with less value and performance over twice what I was charged for my previous car with more power and value
I then looked online and saw that AXA gave a quote on a search engine and also through the performance direct website proving they were lieing about the reason for not standing by the agreed and paid for insurance - this mistake should be on them and they should honour the insurance certificate they provided - when explaining the potential implications for driving 300 miles home with no insurance cover as they told me after being provided a certificate of insurance and being assured twice over a recorded telephone conversation that it was a done deal I was met with a response well luckily there was no claim - any thoughts and legal standing would be appreciated
Steve 

[Deleted User]

Could you summarise and add some punctuation?

It will make it easier for people to help you.

SteveG871

I think it's straight forward enough 

Dr_Crypto

You probably were insured for the 300 miles as they didn’t inform you until later that they couldn’t insure you.
I wonder if Performance Direct made a mistake in registering the new vehicle with AXA hence they curtailed the policy? 

The easiest thing to do would be to contact Performance Direct and ask them to sort it out pointing out their website.
If they still can’t insure you then take out another policy and take a pro-rata refund of the original one and ask for your £50 back. 

Sandtree

SteveG871 said:

quoted over £1200 for a car with less value and performance over twice what I was charged for my previous car with more power and value

More power and value is only one consideration when looking at insurance premiums... we were looking to exchange our 8 year old 2.0L T car and either move up to a new 4.8L car worth circa £80k or down to a 1.6L car worth circa £18k. The former would be about a £25 premium refund and the later would be a £300 increase. Even more crazy was adding my wife with a learner licence further reduced the premium on the 4.8L by £50 whereas would have added £400 to the 1.8L

Insurance is heavily based on what other people own this type of car and their claims history.

It is too simplistic to say your broker quoted £1,200 for Axa and quoting on comparison sites give you a different price for Axa... insurance companies have different products and specialist pricing via different distribution channels etc and the pricing for your original product could be very different if it was designed for performance vehicles and you then get a new business quote on a standard vehicle policy.

Ultimately you need to register a complaint and if you are unhappy with their response, or dont get a response within 8 weeks, then you can escalate to the Financial Ombudsman

SteveG871

Appreciate the comment yeah it's a racket for sure, complaint has been put forward