esure - 550% increase in home insurance

OnurE

Esure increased my 83 year old mothers home insurance from £30pm to £160pm in may this year.
I understand that this is a common tactic and may be legal, but it's clearly unethical.

There was no reminder in the post and she didn't notice the 2 renewal emails.
She only realised when her bank account went into overdraft.

I've just cancelled it and switched to another provider for £23.50pm.

Is there any legal avenue to try to claim back the excess insurance that she's paid?

DullGreyGuy

Did she ask for paperwork by post? If not then you openly admit she ignored/"didn't notice" the renewal notices sent by email and so is purely to blame for the situation. 

Insurers cannot charge renewing customers more than they would charge a new customer buying the same policy via the same channel as the renewing customer did (ie phone, website, aggregator etc) since January last year. So it used to be a common tactic to give deep discounts to win new business which then unwind over the first few renewals etc but that's not the case any more. 

If she's not too good at managing her emails it's worth putting all the renewal dates into a calendar and mark a notification 2-3 weeks in advance to check the renewal and shop around. 

DE_612183

Have you asked them to explain the difference?
Have they added stuff onto her policy that she didn't need?

DullGreyGuy

DE_612183 said:

Have you asked them to explain the difference?
Have they added stuff onto her policy that she didn't need?

Almost certainly the call centre agent wont have access to why the price has changed, they aren't empowered to overrule the pricing analysts or underwriters and so its a bit of a moot conversation if they say the last RiskLink model shows an increased risk of flood/subsidence etc in your area with a notable increase in the 1:25 loss ratios hence premiums increased to compensate. Firstly its a long conversation to explain what these things are take up man-hours and the caller will ultimately say they dont know anyone that's had a claim for flood or subsidence etc so why's the model changed. 

It would certainly be unorthodox for an insurer to randomly add new optional extras at renewal. Maybe if they've just launched something brand new but then you'd expect a fanfare about their new Leak Detection Bot or whatever it is. 

user1977

I think you'll find that's a mere 433% increase, not 550%...

Pinkbikini

Hmm, is there a pattern here with Esure and elderly insurers?

My mother, who is over 80yrs old, is insured (Buildings and Contents) with Esure. Approaching renewal time (1 month before), she phoned them to request a renewal quote as she'd not had an email reminder or quote. The phone agent said that he couldn't give a quote as the system hadn't generated one yet (hmmm).
Quote came in by email 14 days before renewal due. For exactly same property and content, same level of service, no claims, no flood risk or big trees, etc the renewal was 3 times the price.
Obv. I've helped her to find a much better deal.  BUT...

• Esure employ dodgy UI patterns to prevent you from cancelling the auto-renewal online (hiding button labels behind other help buttons)
• Their Live Chat (as per most companies) is all but useless and does not let you submit a request to cancel the renewal
• There is no online option available to cancel the renewal
• Their IVR does not give a clear indication which option you need to cancel the renewal, and clips the beginning of some options so you can't tell how to respond
• Finally, and this is where I think they are really at fault, to cancel by post they say you need to allow 15 days. Then they don't send renewals until 14 days prior to policy end.

Endless hours on the phone waiting to cancel the renewal, without success so far. Anyone any tips how to speed this up?

And are they breaching any consumer rights by failing to provide a renewal within the time limit to submit a postal cancellation request?

Normally I just chalk these things up to the standard grubby insurance practices, but this time it seems rather more exploitative. Is there a pattern developing with renewals for elderly insurers?

DullGreyGuy

You'd hope that 15 days for postal enquiries is "up to" and is pessimistic. Whilst Claims inevitably still gets a lot of post I'd think most Sales & Service departments in direct to consumer insurance get almost nothing these days and so not something worth investing millions into to make slicker. 

Insurers are required not to put unnecessary barriers in the way of those wishing to decline an auto-renewal so for example they cannot set their call steering to prioritise customers wanting to do some other type of servicing call over those wanting to decline an auto-renewal. 

As to website UI's, the first thing to always do is try a different web browser... all website owners try to make sites work with all browsers but each browser, and even between different versions of the same browser, uses a different rendering engine and so displays and behaves slightly differently. Clearly if you've tried many browsers and they aren't all left field then it could be poorly coded website, or one that hasn't kept up with the times. 

mark_cycling00

Esure would say that they are an internet based company - the clue is in the name "E" for e-commerce, email etc. And therefore they can offer lower prices.

They are not aimed at people who want to write/receive Postal letters to them. That's rather like trying to post personal cheques to Amazon every time you purchase some hairbands.

This site and comparison sites encourage everyone to use the lowest cost offering without any indication of how you can contact the provider nor whether they are appropriate for elderly, less tech savvy users. This is possibly unethical too

Quotemehappy consistently auto renew at a price within £10 of the cheapest quote available on uSwitch etc.

Maybe this is a better company to use for online insurance but if granny is not checking emails then someone else may need to receive them on behalf on her 

Pinkbikini

mark_cycling00 said:

Esure would say that they are an internet based company - the clue is in the name "E" for e-commerce, email etc. And therefore they can offer lower prices.

They are not aimed at people who want to write/receive Postal letters to them. That's rather like trying to post personal cheques to Amazon every time you purchase some hairbands.

Thanks for reply and tip on quotemehappy.

My issue is with above - yes, of course Esure and internet based as first option. So I should be able to modify details online, right? Or access their live chat operatives who can make chages, right? Or at least send an email requesting these changes, right?

Wrong. Hence my question about resorting to the final, least favourite option - Post!

Sarcasm not aimed at you, BTW, just hugely frustrated at this shambolic company and their approach to fleecing customers.