Help! Car stolen, Insurance hadn't auto renewed!

GrumpyDil

And there are posts on this forum and others about  MIB paying out on a claim and then going after the uninsured motorist to recover their costs. Probably only happen if the uninsured motorist has sufficient assets but not somewhere I would want to end up. 

JordanBos

Grumpy_chap said:

The OP needs to be clear on exact terminology around "declined" as it can have an impact on future premiums from anywhere:

Have you ever had an insurance policy declined, cancelled, voided or had special terms imposed?

Insurance providers may cancel, decline or void a policy if anyone named on the policy misrepresented or failed to disclose important facts that are required to fulfil the policy terms and conditions.

All insurance policies have standard terms and conditions. If you’ve ever had special terms imposed, you would have been advised by the insurance provider before the policy was taken out or renewed.

On to of the loss immediately and the need to declare a loss event (even though no claim).

No I have no reason to have been declined. No points, no change of circumstances. It was just simply they no longer had an appetite to insure Range Rovers.

JordanBos

AdrianC said:

Insurance policy documents were attached to that email.
Those documents said that the insurer was declining to renew, because they did not wish to cover the risk.
The insurer then did not take the annual premium from the OP's account.

THREE MONTHS later...

Ok Adrian, they were, you are right on that. But would I didn't think I needed to look at them. The point I'm making is if the subject heading had been a little clearer it would have saved me a lot of pain. Even if it had said *Important rather than *declined.

JordanBos

Supersonos said:

JordanBos said:

Yes I am an idiot!

Actually I disagree - you're not an idiot.  Yes, so it's your responsibility to check you're insured but I would absolutely have done the same as you.  Seen that subject line about insurance documents, not read the email and got on with my life assuming all is good.

The other day I spent an hour and a quarter (no exaggeration) trying to find out who I was insured with.  No evidence in statements, no emails, letters.  MID said I was insured (but doesn't say who with) but all I could find was a Direct Line policy that I'd cancelled a week later.  I don't remember doing it.

I worked it all out in the end, but emails are easy to ignore and lose/delete.  If ever I get stopped by the police and they ask who I'm insured with, they better be prepared to wait a very long time to get an answer!

Hope you get your Range Rover back...  Someone in our village recently had a high value BMW stolen using the keyless hack, so I now keep my keys in a faraday pouch, although I'm still toying with the idea of disabling keyless entry altogether.

Ah, thank you so much. I was starting to feel like the only person in the world!
No news on the car as yet. I live in a gated development and there is CCTV on the front gate and a neighbour has something. The police have the CCTV and they have a few things they are going to follow up on!
Thank you for making me feel slightly more normal!

JordanBos

rudekid48 said:

OP, you need to be very specific about timelines here...  Your insurer MUST give you sufficient notice of renewal terms, regardless of auto-renewal.  You should have received an initial email/letter before your policy expired advising you of the renewal terms - including if they did not wish to offer renewal.  They cannot just email you on the day and say 'no thanks'.  If the insurer did not follow the correct process then the FOS may well be inclined to find in your favour.  Can you post the timeline here? i.e. what was the renewal date of your policy, when did you get the email from the insurer, was it just one email or were there a number that you ignored etc.  Either way you will have to raise a formal complaint with the insurer first and wait for their final response or 8 weeks (whichever is sooner) before the FOS will review your case... 

Ah ok, this is interesting! This is certainly the only email I have found. I will search through tonight when the kids are in bed and post everything!

AdrianC

JordanBos said:

AdrianC said:

Insurance policy documents were attached to that email.
Those documents said that the insurer was declining to renew, because they did not wish to cover the risk.
The insurer then did not take the annual premium from the OP's account.

THREE MONTHS later...

Ok Adrian, they were, you are right on that. But would I didn't think I needed to look at them. The point I'm making is if the subject heading had been a little clearer it would have saved me a lot of pain. Even if it had said *Important rather than *declined.

Interesting diversion this is, it's all a bit irrelevant, though, in terms of getting you retrospectively covered for the theft.

The insurer you were with last year did not want to insure the car any more.
You did not buy insurance from anybody else who was willing to take the risk.

If the failure to autorenew was a dropped furry one in their systems, you may have a chance. But... nope.

Richard53

I have a lot of sympathy for the OP here. If I received an email with the header 'Insurance documents attached' or similar, I would 100% assume that the insurance would renew. If the insco were declining to renew, the least I would have expected was a header saying '***Important - your insurance policy - action needed - do not ignore***' or some such. With the OP's example, I would have checked the new premium and then filed the email in my Car Insurance folder, without necessarily opening the documents and reading them through. I'd assume that, in the absence of any indication to the contrary, the terms would be the same as before. That's how things usually work.

If the OP is the sort of person who doesn't check the renewal premium, then he's a bit of a fool, but losing a £65k car seems a very harsh penalty. I'd say the insco should have been a lot more proactive about ensuring that the customer knew, in no uncertain terms, that he was shortly about to be uninsured.

Genuine question: I thought you had to have valid insurance to tax the vehicle. Did the OP receive nothing from the DVLA about driving an untaxed vehicle? Or does that no longer apply?

Supersonos

Richard53 said:

filed the email in my Car Insurance folder

Why have I never thought of having email folders for certain things?!

Richard53

Supersonos said:

Richard53 said:

filed the email in my Car Insurance folder

Why have I never thought of having email folders for certain things?!

I use Gmail, and it allows you to set up any number of subfolders under your inbox. I must have 30 or so. I try to keep my Inbox to a maximum of 10 messages, and if it goes beyond that I either archive or delete. It means emails are manageable, and I never have to look too hard to find a specific one.

Money_Grabber13579

JordanBos said:

AdrianC said:

Insurance policy documents were attached to that email.
Those documents said that the insurer was declining to renew, because they did not wish to cover the risk.
The insurer then did not take the annual premium from the OP's account.

THREE MONTHS later...

Ok Adrian, they were, you are right on that. But would I didn't think I needed to look at them. The point I'm making is if the subject heading had been a little clearer it would have saved me a lot of pain. Even if it had said *Important rather than *declined.

When you say “if it had said important rather than declined” does that mean the subject header of the email did say it was declined? If that’s the case, I suspect you’ve gone from having a tiny chance with the ombudsman to zero chance.