Insurance - Cancellation Fee but No Cover

trashedteen

Please someone help me here, I've been on the phone for past 2 hours with an insurer going round and round in circles. 

In a nutshell, I paid for a premium at 5pm yesterday to start today. I noticed i had received no documents so called and they explained: 

"Because you booked online, it can take up to 24 hours to process before you are insured, this is due to a system error on our end" 

I have been passed backwards and forwards hearing various iterations of the same explanation. 

I eventually got through to a supervisor after being told she was on holiday. I said I wanted to cancel as they couldn't provide the service, she explained that because the payment hasn't come through on their end, she couldn't do that until it had.

On top of that, if I did choose to cancel my policy which "should start about 5pm today" then I would be charged a cancellation fee of £25.

I explained that I had paid for a policy, last night, which was supposed to start today which now isn't because of an error on their end and that I would like to cancel with a guarantee of a full refund and no fees and she said this wasn't possible. 

I recorded the last hour and a half of the conversation for my own records. 

Please someone tell me my rights here because I feel like this can't be legal. 

DullGreyGuy

Sounds like you are dealing with a broker rather than an insurer

When you got the quote did you select just a start date or a start date and time? Does their website come with any warning about your policy not starting until you receive an email or such?

 When they said it would be setup today did they say what the effective start time is? Its perfectly possible for them to backdate it to 00:01 even if its setup at 17:00

Insurance comes with a statutory cooling off period however it's perfectly legal for them to charge reasonable costs for cancellation in this period. Compared to some, £25 is fairly cheap. Whilst they appear to have some issues I'm not convinced it correct to say they cannot provide cover, just its not been put into systems yet. 

trashedteen

@DullGreyGuy Yes it's a broker. I didn't select a start time, there was no option to and I've never had to before. Can't see anything on the website and the only correspondence I've had with them is an email to confirm the start and end date of the policy (no time stated) with a message to say I should receive my policy documents soon. 

What I mean by not providing cover is that I have paid for the policy to start today and they have confirmed that I am not insured until the payment is processed, which it isn't on their end. 

I explained that I took the policy out today because I was supposed to be on the road this morning and I now can't drive anywhere. The only advice they could give was to wait until 5pm. I don't see why I should have to pay any fees to cancel a policy that apparently doesn't exist yet??

@lopsyfa They have confirmed the payment hasn't gone through on their end "because the system sometimes takes 24 hours to update" so I am not insured.