Car Insurance Voided

Onfyre

In 2015 I was stopped by the police for no insurance, completely my fault as I had changed banks and didn’t realise and was away at the time so didn’t recieve a letter). Car was impounded, police said need new policy to get car out so I signed up with Go Girl. Took details to the station and they rang Go Girl to confirm who stated their policy didn’t cover compounded vehicles, they reimbursed the money and voided the insurance. I then got insurance with a specialist company that dealt with compounded insurance (didn’t even know it was a thing) and now whenever I get car insurance I need to declare it was voided, and insurance amount is very very high! 
is there anything I can do? 

SiliconChip

Are you sure the voiding is what's causing the high premiums? Have you tried a test quote without it to see what your base price is? Voiding shouldn't really have that much effect, it's not like having a policy cancelled by the insurer.

Onfyre

SiliconChip said:

Are you sure the voiding is what's causing the high premiums? Have you tried a test quote without it to see what your base price is? Voiding shouldn't really have that much effect, it's not like having a policy cancelled by the insurer.

I tried it without the void and it knocked 2 years off the yearly amount. I do have a SP50 for speeding on motorway 2 years ago but nothing else and when I initially added that to my policy, it didn’t add that much on. A few years ago (just after the speeding fine), before I was on a joint policy with partner, it was atleast £700 a year cheaper! Been driving 15 years. 

Mark_d

I don't think you need to declare voided insurance.  Unlike cancelled insurance your policy was voided because you made a simple mistake when taking out the policy

Aretnap

My first thought was to ask whether GoGirl (a) asked if your car was impounded when you bought the policy or (B) made clear at the post of purchase that it could not be used to release an impounded vehicle (or (c) did the policy terms even exclude impounded cars - I'm not sure I've ever seen terms that clearly do), and that if the answer to those questions was no then you would have grounds for complaint against the insurer. But if this was in 2015 then you are probably well out of time to make a complaint. 

There are insurers who only ask if you have had a policy cancelled in the last 5 years. Direct Line and it's various brands (Churchill, Privilege) spring to mind - you could try them.

Aretnap

Mark_d said:

I don't think you need to declare voided insurance.  Unlike cancelled insurance your policy was voided because you made a simple mistake when taking out the policy

I would not rely on someone on the internet telling you that he "doesn't think" you need to declare this, but there would be no harm in ringing some insurers, speaking to a human being, explaining what happened and asking if they consider this to be a cancellation. The worst they can do is say yes.

DullGreyGuy

SiliconChip said:

Are you sure the voiding is what's causing the high premiums? Have you tried a test quote without it to see what your base price is? Voiding shouldn't really have that much effect, it's not like having a policy cancelled by the insurer.

Voiding is even worse than having insurance cancelled 

Mark_d said:

I don't think you need to declare voided insurance.  Unlike cancelled insurance your policy was voided because you made a simple mistake when taking out the policy

Voiding is what happens when you've taken out a fraudulent policy etc... cancelling means the insurance existed but ceased at a certain point. Voiding means the actions were so bad that they've cancelled it back to inception such that the policy never existed. Insurers can only do it in the most extreme circumstances. 

Onfyre said:

In 2015 I was stopped by the police for no insurance, completely my fault as I had changed banks and didn’t realise and was away at the time so didn’t recieve a letter). Car was impounded, police said need new policy to get car out so I signed up with Go Girl. Took details to the station and they rang Go Girl to confirm who stated their policy didn’t cover compounded vehicles, they reimbursed the money and voided the insurance. I then got insurance with a specialist company that dealt with compounded insurance (didn’t even know it was a thing) and now whenever I get car insurance I need to declare it was voided, and insurance amount is very very high! 
is there anything I can do? 

So you've had one policy cancelled for non-payment and then this issue with Go Girl?

If you'd asked back in 2015 I'd have suggested that you speak to Go Girl and ask them if you need to declare the policy was voided to other insurers or have they in fact just treated it as a customer cancellation which doesn't need declaring. If they had said yes you do need to declare it then I'd have suggested going down the complaints route as at no point in the Q&B process are you told the policy cannot incept whilst the vehicle is impounded, the process doesn't even require you to read the policy terms before agreeing, just their admin terms which dont mention this. 

That would still leave you with a non-payment cancellation to declare but a lesser sin than having a policy voided. 

Your options are either to get quotes from the small number of players that ask about cancellations/voids in the last X years or revert to the telephone where you can explain the situation and see if anyone will decide to accept you because the main issue is a non-payment one. If they do accept, obviously they are more likely to require the premiums to be paid in full given your history of non-payment.