AutoAid renewal extra charges - a cautionary tale

My_perfect_cousin

Our AutoAid renewal email has just landed. It includes an extra charge for the second driver and an extra charge for a car that's more than 15 years old.  We have the extra driver so presumed that the company has changed its charging structure to show it as an extra rather than inclusive. Fair enough I guess.  We don't have a car that is or will be over 15 years old in this policy period. I therefore presumed that AutoAid had made a mistake by adding an extra charge for a 15+ year old car. We are on auto-renew. I phoned them.

As far as I understood from the brief call the new charges reflect the actual cost of the policy. And that last year's policy was discounted.  I queried this and it was reiterated several times. I asked whether the charge for the over 15 year old vehicle (which we don't have) is a 'default' setting for all customers. The person said that I'd need to remove the extra charge (or charges) from my account on my account page. The person didn't respond to my question of whether all customers have the 'over 15 year old car' extra automatically added.

The cautionary tale would appear to be that it would seem worthwhile checking the detail of the renewal quote from AutoAid to be sure that it is what is required. It seems fairly straightforward to remove the specific charges for the two aspects via the account page.

Peter999_2

I've learnt over the years that you never ever set them to auto-renew and just swap between the different companies every year and go through topcashback/quidco

zagubov

I don't autorenew most insurances because they bump up the premiums so much, but I made an exception for breakdown insurance.
I'd been happy with autoaid for donkeys years. However I only noticed this weekend that I had an "over -16 year vehicle premium" of 21.90 boosting my premium from £75 to £95, and I had been paying the this extra amount last year without noticing it.
You need to go to their members portal here and remove it before auto-renewing.
I'm still sticking with them though because  a few years back when we broke down 100 miles from home they supplied two relay companies to return our car home the same day, and got us a taxi to an airport where they hired a car home for us. That kind of service made their price look like peanuts.

Boa21

Just had my renewal. Assuming that you have the cover for both you and a spouse it's fairly simple to save six quid.
1. Don't autorenew
2. Before the policy lapses, take out a new policy in your partners name, starting on the date of renewal.

I do this every year, it's the same cover for both partners.