Refund when premium triples on auto-renewal

Ilias_Karampatsos

My car breakdown policy with "recovercover.com" / "Dynamo Cover" auto renewed without me noticing. I don not recall ever switching on auto-renewals.

They tripled my premium since last year, saying I was no longer a new customer. I have been with them for 4 years. They payment went through and I was charged.

They tried the same thing last year, but I caught it because they send me in advance email with the new premium clearly stipulated in the email body. I called them and they reduced it back to its usual levels.

However, this year they got smart and send over a generic email that did not have the new premium in the body:

It looks like the next part of your contract is about to begin and so your provider has updated your account with your required documents and terms and conditions for you.

I wrongly assumed it would be the same as last year and did not follow it up.

I was told, since my policy auto-renewed, this insurance product did not have a cooling off period. They have confirmed that they are regulated by the FCA.

I was asked to pay brokerage and cancellation fees. Which is are roughly 50% of the new premium.

I cancelled the policy on the day it auto-renewed and I am waiting for the refund.

Can you advise what are my rights and if it possible get a full refund.

Thanks in advance

Brie

so they changed a DD without telling you?  Isn't that in contravention of the DD guarantee??

Or was it a continuous payment authority?  In which case if you had told them no previously they should have paid attention to and your bank should try to claim the whole amount back.

km1500

you have no rights unfortunately. They advised you it was going to auto renew - you did nothing despite having the same stunt pulled last year

Lots of companies try the auto-renew trick we all need to keep on top.of it.

Ilias_Karampatsos

Brie said:

so they changed a DD without telling you?  Isn't that in contravention of the DD guarantee??

Or was it a continuous payment authority?  In which case if you had told them no previously they should have paid attention to and your bank should try to claim the whole amount back.

Hi,

It was not a DD but a credit card linked to my account. I do not recall saving my card on the website or ever switching or agreeing to a auto-renew. It was all a big surprise this year

born_again

Brie said:

so they changed a DD without telling you?  Isn't that in contravention of the DD guarantee??

Or was it a continuous payment authority?  In which case if you had told them no previously they should have paid attention to and your bank should try to claim the whole amount back.

As OP cancelled on day payment taken, they are too late for a chargeback on the grounds it was cancelled.

Aylesbury_Duck

You've said you didn't notice the renewal, that you don't recall switching on auto-renewal, you didn't read the email properly, you assumed the premium would be the same, you didn't follow it up and you don't remember saving your card details.

With respect, that's a lot of vagueness so it's impossible to say what your rights are.  It's possible they've wrongly auto-renewed, but it doesn't sound like it.  Can you not dig out all the emails and policy details to find out exactly what you signed up to?

DullGreyGuy

Ilias_Karampatsos said:

I wrongly assumed it would be the same as last year and did not follow it up.

I was told, since my policy auto-renewed, this insurance product did not have a cooling off period. They have confirmed that they are regulated by the FCA.

I was asked to pay brokerage and cancellation fees. Which is are roughly 50% of the new premium.

I cancelled the policy on the day it auto-renewed and I am waiting for the refund.

Can you advise what are my rights and if it possible get a full refund.

Cooling off periods simply give you a right to cancel... doesn't mean it's cost free to cancel in a cooling off period. Outside of a cooling off period you have no statutory right to cancel and so in theory you could be locked into the full year... in practice most insurances can be cancelled at any time but not all (eg PMI often cannot be)

With the new policy having incepted it'd be normal and accepted practice for termination fees to apply... ultimately you made the choice to use an assumption rather than checking, which is rather odd given you were "caught" last year by the same, and the consequences are the fees. 

Almost all insurances are sold stating they will auto-renew, most don't give you an option to to buy without accepting auto-renewal. There is a reason why insurers must notify you of the renewal in advance and it's sensible to check it! Its also sensible to use a diary for when things are due to renew because many other industries don't have to inform you before renewing and its down to you to remember to advise them to lapse it before your bound for another year.

Aylesbury_Duck

DullGreyGuy said:

Ilias_Karampatsos said:

I wrongly assumed it would be the same as last year and did not follow it up.

I was told, since my policy auto-renewed, this insurance product did not have a cooling off period. They have confirmed that they are regulated by the FCA.

I was asked to pay brokerage and cancellation fees. Which is are roughly 50% of the new premium.

I cancelled the policy on the day it auto-renewed and I am waiting for the refund.

Can you advise what are my rights and if it possible get a full refund.

Almost all insurances are sold stating they will auto-renew, most don't give you an option to to buy without accepting auto-renewal. 

Indeed, and there are advantages to auto-renewal.  Our two cars were insured by Churchill last year, one policy being auto-renew and the other not, but having checked the first, I erroneously assumed they were both auto-renewed.  I found a better policy for the auto-renew one, so cancelled it.  I couldn't find a better alternative for the non-auto-renew one, so left it to what I thought would be an automatic renewal but of course it wouldn't do so.  I'm thankful for the email and postal reminders a few days before, both might have been missed with a renewal date of 28th December and us being away over Christmas, and I might have driven home uninsured.  Lesson learned.

HillStreetBlues

You could have a case of it being an unfair contract as price wasn't disclosed via the e-mail

km1500

that is certainly true they should have told you the price what if they had renewed at 10k ! 

the problem as I see it is that I think you have just paid the actual book full premium and the rates you were getting in previous years were discounted