Problem with Churchill updating their systems

ninat

Churchill are updating their systems and my car renewal email came in informing me my policy number is now 10 digits. 

When I log in there is no option to renew and everything is listed under the old 8 digit number. 

The call centre can’t help because it all looks good at their end- they are working with the new system. I asked for my renewal documents to be emailed, but all they did was email a link which takes me back to the original 8 digit policy. I’ve tried clearing my browser, I’ve tried adding a policy quoting the new 10 digits, but it tells me my policy number should be 8.
I can renew over the phone but I have low confidence of actually being able to access any documents. 

Anyone else having the same issues?

Deltic97

Yes having the exact same problem, customer service useless so I went down the complaint route same result. Why do these companies have to change things that work?

Sandtree

Deltic97 said:

Why do these companies have to change things that work?

To be able to introduce new features
To enable the business to be able to make changes without a £10m IT project
To enable customers to be able to self serve more
To reduce costs
To increase automation
To deal with demands from business partners
To deal with issues like running out of policy numbers

The last one was a real issue, a former client's old system used to assign a policy number to every quote done which wasn't so bad when they built their system and only did quotes over the phone. When they introduced a website they found they were suddenly doing 10x the volume of quotes and burning through policy numbers. Then someone wanted to put the brands on Confused.com etc which would increase the volume of quotes at least 10x again, probably many more times that and so a major system change had to be done to create a quote reference number concept else after a few weeks they system would have locked up having no more policy references left to use. 

Deltic97

That a perfectly valid point Sandtree but it does not help if you cannot access you policy

Sandtree

Deltic97 said:

That a perfectly valid point Sandtree but it does not help if you cannot access you policy

Didn't say it did but there can be very good reasons to change something that isn't broken... plus sometimes things are more broken than customers realise. A former client created "online servicing" but it was only for things that never generated an additional premium and all it really did behind the scenes was send an email for an operative to manually key the change.

Clearly companies dont often intentionally make a retrograde step but sometimes its necessary to temporarily do so... with the above example after cutover those that had received a quote in the last 2 weeks before the change were unable to retrieve them online.

Plus some upgrades go wrong or sometimes people don't think of certain scenarios 

Deltic97

Ok point taken but if a retrograde step has been taken then how do I get this problem fixed when I have 3 ipads,  2 computers all showing the problem on different web browsers and I've phoned, messaged online, sent emails, sent screenshots just to be told every time give it a few more days.   I can see Sandtree that you get involved in many conversations but in this case customer service is more than useless .

Sandtree

Deltic97 said:
 I can see Sandtree that you get involved in many conversations but in this case customer service is more than useless.

Sounds like it (your later point than the former)... will never say that any company always give good service but there are trends 

Shadgrind

July 15 now, WTAF??? Got a good mind to cancel, I have found cheaper elsewhere. Been with the for five out of my nine claim free years! Still in the cooling off phase now, though am not feeling very chilled right now! If i get stopped by plod and they do a check with Churchill it will come up as no policy! Unless I drive around (like they used to in the ‘good’ olde days) with a paper document, in a car with no glovebox!!! MX5 Mk4, if you please! Mazda sacrificing glovebox for weight saving.

GrumpyDil

Shadgrind said:

July 15 now, WTAF??? Got a good mind to cancel, I have found cheaper elsewhere. Been with the for five out of my nine claim free years! Still in the cooling off phase now, though am not feeling very chilled right now! If i get stopped by plod and they do a check with Churchill it will come up as no policy! Unless I drive around (like they used to in the ‘good’ olde days) with a paper document, in a car with no glovebox!!! MX5 Mk4, if you please! Mazda sacrificing glovebox for weight saving.

Has your policy renewed? Bear in mind on renewal there is no cooling off period. 

Shadgrind

GrumpyDil said:

Shadgrind said:

July 15 now, WTAF??? Got a good mind to cancel, I have found cheaper elsewhere. Been with the for five out of my nine claim free years! Still in the cooling off phase now, though am not feeling very chilled right now! If i get stopped by plod and they do a check with Churchill it will come up as no policy! Unless I drive around (like they used to in the ‘good’ olde days) with a paper document, in a car with no glovebox!!! MX5 Mk4, if you please! Mazda sacrificing glovebox for weight saving.

Has your policy renewed? Bear in mind on renewal there is no cooling off period. 

I was sent a renewal reminder, I called up spoke to a sales bod and was quoted £240 (about £65 more than last year). I said “Excuse me? Sorry I nearly spat my coffee out” anyway after a bit of too-ing and fro-ing got the price down to £179.14p! Paid on the spot, was told:

a. Cooling off period 14 days
b. The price now included protected nine years NCD

However a couple of weeks go by a thick A5 sized letter plops on to the mat, all documents in it apart from the price is wrong (its the £240).

Promptly logged onto website and no policy! Tried to add but ten numbers is too many. I have mobile in hand and am calling now…

Shadgrind

Just got off the phone, with Jessica, after a 25 min wait. Cheerful enough character but wasn’t really interested in the website issues. Gave her my name DOB, car details etc. I then told her about the issue of the ‘add policy” only accepting eight digits. Asked me for my email address. She came back with, “There is no policy at that email address” methinks, you mean the email address you have been communicating with me for the past four or five years?

So I say can you put that down as my email address? Says she “There is already an account at that address”. I’m thinking, yeah that’s mine!

So now I have to give my gmail address. She sends me a link to activate my account but of course I can’t change back to my old email address as it already has a user (me!) with no policy attached. 🤦‍♂️