Hastings Car Insurance 'glitch' costs me £300

DullGreyGuy

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

DullGreyGuy said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

DullGreyGuy said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

If the comparison site had everything correct but all data didn’t transfer that doesn’t explain any extra cost. 

Have you run the comparison again? 

They have presumably called Hasting's seeing the policy is insured only driver and when asking about their ND daughter that to add her on it'd be £300 extra cost

I get that  

What I mean is if the comparison site had the correct info for the quote and Hastings left the policy as it was they'd be overcharging the OP.

The policy cost is based on risk, a second driver increases that risk so they should either be giving the OP some money back or adding the daughter with the current price standing (if they said they wanted an admin fee that may be fair).

In this situation Hastings want to be paid for the same risk twice! 

I think you are mistaking the roles of the different parties here....

Aggregator takes in all the risk details.... it sends those risk details to a variety of insurers, brokers and software firms. That transmission of data requires manipulation as, for example, the aggregator includes the answers "residents parking" or "office car park" whereas one particular insurer's options are only On Road, Drive or Garage... this manipulation can happen at either end of the comms. 

The Insurer, broker or software house then evaluate the risk and pass back to the aggregator the premium and a link to be able to access the quote on their website.

The aggregator then displays all the quotes it received in price order. The user selects one and is told they will be transferred to the insurer/brokers website to make the purchase and that they should check all the details there. This is for two reasons, firstly is so the user can review the translation thats happened and secondly to make sure there have been no errors (their own or anyone elses). Assuming the user is then happy they click the buy button. 

You may have chosen residential parking as its a communal parking inside the building behind locked security gates. The process may have transposed that to "driveway" as it has to cover the other type of communal parking when its just an open air parking area infront of the block.  As such you may decide given the reduced options that "garage" may be more appropriate.

Here the OP has asked for prices for 2 drivers but has been presented with a price on the aggregator for 1 drivers with a health warning they must check the details when on the vendors website. They have gone to the vendors website and here they've been shown the same price but now saying its only for 1 driver. The OP didnt look and so proceeded to buy and paid the agreed price for one driver.

Its certainly unusual to happen... when I dealt with the aggregators our systems were sent not to quote at all if there was any flags raised with the call to our API but without seeing every step in the process and exactly what went wrong its pure speculation on if its reasonable for a IOD quote to have been generated or if a reasonably built system should have identified an issue and flagged it. 

I see what you mean if the OP was to run another comparison and it was £300 more on the comparison site second time around then the first quote was a mistake due to the insurer not getting all the info to make an appropriate quote. 

If the second comparison is the same as it first was then I don't think the insurer shouldn't be charging any extra (unless the same glitch has happened again!) but I assume it should be obvious from other prices given on that comparison site or others as I've never seen comparisons £300 apart, maybe overall but if there's 50 results there's usually £10, £20 whatever between each one. 

The key is you dont buy on the comparison site and are explicitly told to check on, in this case, Hasting's site before buying. The OP has failed to follow the instructions else they'd have seen it is IOD. 

Because its financial services the aggregator will have a duty of care to the OP however there is no contract between the OP and the aggregator. The aggregator realistically doesnt benefit from the "mistake" as the OP can cancel in the cooling off period and so the aggregator doesnt get their fee from Hastings and had the right price been shown then the OP would simply have been choosing a different company from the list who'd still be paying the aggregator the same fee. 

tripled

gawa75 said:

Via a comparison site, I recently bought new car insurance for myself with Hastings and included my daughter on to the policy.

When I looked at the policy docs when they were emailed to me, only I was named on the policy. 

I called Hastings to ask why my daughter wasn't named on the policy and they said there had been a 'computer glitch', she was in their system but yes, only I was on the policy and it would cost an extra £300 to add her on. 

My issue is that I bought the policy in good faith at the price I was quoted online, and Hastings seems to have moved the goalposts. Surely a glitch is their issue, not mine as I bought at the price they quoted me? 

Thanks in advance.  

EDIT: Hastings now say I have to take the issue up with the comparison site as not all data transferred over to them. 

It's poor service on Hastings part, but yes, take it up as a formal complaint with the comparison site. They will have a record of the quote details you entered and will be able to identify if there was a technical fault in transferring the information, and try to resolve the issue with the insurer. If they do not resolve the issue, you will be able to escalate it to the Ombudsman. The posters who say you have no recourse are incorrect.

Many years ago I used to work for one of the big comparison sites (in IT, doing the integration with the insurance platforms) and they took mis-pricing complaints seriously. The usual outcome was for the quoted price to be honoured.

DullGreyGuy

tripled said:
The posters who say you have no recourse are incorrect.

Many years ago I used to work for one of the big comparison sites (in IT, doing the integration with the insurance platforms) and they took mis-pricing complaints seriously. The usual outcome was for the quoted price to be honoured.

Dont think anyone has said there is no recourse, just the OP has a material part to play in the problem.

If you actually look at Ombudsman decisions (eg https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN8653593.pdf ) its a real mixed bag... some say an insurer has chosen to sell via this channel so has to take the risks of IT failures with it and others like the above, say the insurer can only quote based on what its told and if an error is made by the aggregator it isnt the insurers to cover the cost of as per...

The error in this information therefore either lies in what Mr W entered or in the data that the price comparison site passed to Hastings. I am satisfied that Hastings itself did not make an error in calculating the original premium.

tripled

DullGreyGuy said:

Dont think anyone has said there is no recourse, just the OP has a material part to play in the problem.

Jumblebumble said:

The reality is that you might just as well forget it as Hastings are not likely to want to waste much fruitless time on this

DullGreyGuy said:

The error in this information therefore either lies in what Mr W entered or in the data that the price comparison site passed to Hastings. I am satisfied that Hastings itself did not make an error in calculating the original premium.

The example you've given appears to be a complaint originally made to Hastings. The complaint needs to be to the aggregator.

DullGreyGuy

tripled said:
The example you've given appears to be a complaint originally made to Hastings. The complaint needs to be to the aggregator.

In fact every complaint I saw, upheld or not, was made against the insurer and not the aggregator. 

Looking at complaints made directly against aggregators, of which there are few, unfortunately none cover this scenario, in all cases the aggregator proved to the FOS' satisfaction that the details entered by the customer were in error or the ombudsman didnt agree that the questions were unclear.

born_again

Interesting that Compare the market say.

Complaints about Products and Services purchased through our web site

If your complaint is about a product or service that you have purchased via this platform, then you can complain directly to the relevant product or service provider responsible for supplying the product or service. We cannot answer complaints on behalf of a product or service provider or accept responsibility for any such complaints. We recommend that you visit the website of the product or service provider and follow their complaints procedure if you wish to make a complaint against them.

https://www.comparethemarket.com/information/terms-and-conditions

DullGreyGuy

born_again said:

Interesting that Compare the market say.

Complaints about Products and Services purchased through our web site

If your complaint is about a product or service that you have purchased via this platform, then you can complain directly to the relevant product or service provider responsible for supplying the product or service. We cannot answer complaints on behalf of a product or service provider or accept responsibility for any such complaints. We recommend that you visit the website of the product or service provider and follow their complaints procedure if you wish to make a complaint against them.

https://www.comparethemarket.com/information/terms-and-conditions

Aggregators are purely introducers, they dont vouch for the quality of the product or supplier.

Unfortunately even with statements like the above you still get cases like https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-2771811.pdf  where the person bought a policy via CTM only for the insurer to subsequently go bust... the customer felt CTM should be liable for having provided the introduction but the FOS didnt agree.