Surecover Group

Northern_Dachshund

Hi
This company are an appliance cover group
Since January 24 they have been debiting £240 per fortnight from my mothers bank account
My mum spotted 2 transactions in August and called them, was promised a refund - none received
I was reviewing her financial transactions with her and her bank last week and discovered that these had been happening back to January - I called the company, told it had been escalated to their Finance team and I would get a call back withing 48 hours, I also asked if they were FCA regulated and was told that they were.
No call received, called them back today to be told that they would contact Finance again!
No one will give full names - company policy, they wont allow transfer to Finance, and wouldnt escalate to a manager (apparently it was her I spoke to on Friday)
I cannot see them on the FCA website
Bank have stopped future payments, but any suggestion as to next steps?
Many thanks

lisyloo

were they taken as direct debits?
If so they should be covered by the direct debit guarantee.

retiredbanker1

'Future Payments' suggests to me that these were debit card transactions (At some time did she give out her card number?).
Collate all statements from when they started to now - IMO write off first payment but the rest should be reported as fraudulent.

DullGreyGuy

Northern_Dachshund said:

Hi
This company are an appliance cover group
Since January 24 they have been debiting £240 per fortnight from my mothers bank account
My mum spotted 2 transactions in August and called them, was promised a refund - none received
I was reviewing her financial transactions with her and her bank last week and discovered that these had been happening back to January - I called the company, told it had been escalated to their Finance team and I would get a call back withing 48 hours, I also asked if they were FCA regulated and was told that they were.
No call received, called them back today to be told that they would contact Finance again!
No one will give full names - company policy, they wont allow transfer to Finance, and wouldnt escalate to a manager (apparently it was her I spoke to on Friday)
I cannot see them on the FCA website
Bank have stopped future payments, but any suggestion as to next steps?
Many thanks

Clearly their biggest competitor is going to be Domestic & General and certainly with them 80% or more of the policies they sell are structured as a "repair plan" and not insurance. D&G do do some actual insurance policies so are PRA and FCA regulated with FOS rights etc but only for those insurance products. 

Whilst CoverSure do mention the FCA on their Vulnerable Customers page I suspect that they are selling repair plans and so aren't regulated. They are also tiny, with a negative balance sheet, though improved on last year. 

What was the method of payment? CPA or DD? 

What was your mother expecting? £240 a month? Nothing at all? Depending on the payment method there may be a clawback mechanism from the bank especially if it's just for the duplicate payment rather than all the payments. 

Northern_Dachshund

DullGreyGuy said:

Northern_Dachshund said:

Hi
This company are an appliance cover group
Since January 24 they have been debiting £240 per fortnight from my mothers bank account
My mum spotted 2 transactions in August and called them, was promised a refund - none received
I was reviewing her financial transactions with her and her bank last week and discovered that these had been happening back to January - I called the company, told it had been escalated to their Finance team and I would get a call back withing 48 hours, I also asked if they were FCA regulated and was told that they were.
No call received, called them back today to be told that they would contact Finance again!
No one will give full names - company policy, they wont allow transfer to Finance, and wouldnt escalate to a manager (apparently it was her I spoke to on Friday)
I cannot see them on the FCA website
Bank have stopped future payments, but any suggestion as to next steps?
Many thanks

Clearly their biggest competitor is going to be Domestic & General and certainly with them 80% or more of the policies they sell are structured as a "repair plan" and not insurance. D&G do do some actual insurance policies so are PRA and FCA regulated with FOS rights etc but only for those insurance products. 

Whilst CoverSure do mention the FCA on their Vulnerable Customers page I suspect that they are selling repair plans and so aren't regulated. They are also tiny, with a negative balance sheet, though improved on last year. 

What was the method of payment? CPA or DD? 

What was your mother expecting? £240 a month? Nothing at all? Depending on the payment method there may be a clawback mechanism from the bank especially if it's just for the duplicate payment rather than all the payments. 

Thank you, yes they were Debit Card transactions, she thinks that she signed up for appliance cover over the phone and would have paid the annual value (240), looking at Google reviews it would appear that they target vulnerable people and pressuarise them into signing up - my mum would have fallen for that. I don't think that she would fall for repeated calls from the same company. I'm currently working through reporting this to various organisations, and need to revisit the bank as intially they wanted to give Surecover opportunity to refund and so wouldnt do anything. Future debits to this company are stopped for 13 months. it's the recovery now and hopefully getting the message out about the nature of the company

DullGreyGuy

Northern_Dachshund said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Northern_Dachshund said:

Hi
This company are an appliance cover group
Since January 24 they have been debiting £240 per fortnight from my mothers bank account
My mum spotted 2 transactions in August and called them, was promised a refund - none received
I was reviewing her financial transactions with her and her bank last week and discovered that these had been happening back to January - I called the company, told it had been escalated to their Finance team and I would get a call back withing 48 hours, I also asked if they were FCA regulated and was told that they were.
No call received, called them back today to be told that they would contact Finance again!
No one will give full names - company policy, they wont allow transfer to Finance, and wouldnt escalate to a manager (apparently it was her I spoke to on Friday)
I cannot see them on the FCA website
Bank have stopped future payments, but any suggestion as to next steps?
Many thanks

Clearly their biggest competitor is going to be Domestic & General and certainly with them 80% or more of the policies they sell are structured as a "repair plan" and not insurance. D&G do do some actual insurance policies so are PRA and FCA regulated with FOS rights etc but only for those insurance products. 

Whilst CoverSure do mention the FCA on their Vulnerable Customers page I suspect that they are selling repair plans and so aren't regulated. They are also tiny, with a negative balance sheet, though improved on last year. 

What was the method of payment? CPA or DD? 

What was your mother expecting? £240 a month? Nothing at all? Depending on the payment method there may be a clawback mechanism from the bank especially if it's just for the duplicate payment rather than all the payments. 

Thank you, yes they were Debit Card transactions, she thinks that she signed up for appliance cover over the phone and would have paid the annual value (240), looking at Google reviews it would appear that they target vulnerable people and pressuarise them into signing up - my mum would have fallen for that. I don't think that she would fall for repeated calls from the same company. I'm currently working through reporting this to various organisations, and need to revisit the bank as intially they wanted to give Surecover opportunity to refund and so wouldnt do anything. Future debits to this company are stopped for 13 months. it's the recovery now and hopefully getting the message out about the nature of the company

If it's a Debit card payment then it should be a CPA (continuous payment authority). Just make sure the bank blocks them from doing a CPA from her account... traditionally banks have been very poor on advising customers about CPAs or what tools the bank have at their disposal. They can cancel a CPA and block a certain merchantID from setting up a new one... it is that blunt a tool though so you can't say you want them to pay the plan on the cooker but block all other plans.

I dont know them as a company nor their marketing strategies but irrespective of who is being "targeted" warranties and discretionary insurances in general are much more frequently bought by older people who are presumably more risk adverse than younger people who either dont think about it or think they'll deal with it if it happens rather than spending beer tokens now on what might happen in the future.

solstarB

Not to confuse matters but the “company” Northern Daschund is talking about is Surecover Group Ltd, based in Brighton. They haven’t provided me with a postal address.

I’m in exactly the same position.

solstarB

Anyone with similar experiences with this company should report this to Trading Standards West Sussex.

solstarB

Surecover Group featured on Watchdog BBC One Show Wednesday 25th September. Check it out on Iplayer and contact watchdog@bbc.co.uk

CateyJ

This happened to my elderly mum - Lloyds gave back £2k. These people even went back to her after I'd had them blocked from online payments to get her debit card number and started taking payments again. Criminals. Tried to report on East Sussex trading standards but form doesn't work for me. Report them. Contact your bank. It's a pressurised payment and coercive so your bank should cover that and return the money.