Hastings Direct…additional premium...need I say more

Smvs

My son passed his driving test last June, we bought him a 2012 Corsa at the end of October. He got a quote from Compare the Market for Hastings Direct for £2400 with a £700 excess and me as a second driver with 20 years no claims bonus. Checked my myself and my husband. Paid in full at the time.

Fast forward to this week - 4 MONTHS LATER - and he received an email asking for a copy of his log book saying that he had said the purchase date of the car was 2020.when he called them to state he didn’t know what they were talking about, they said it indicated fraud and said if he didn’t pay an additional £1700 the policy would be cancelled.

My son has no experience of dealing with any of this as it’s his first car.

A week of talking to ‘customer services’ is enough to drive us round the twist - it’s torture!

On checking the saved quote on Compare the Market, the date was changed to 2020. It was not input as 2020. This was checked at the time by all of us before it was saved. This has actually previously happened to me when trying to get quotes for my own insurance, but luckily I noticed. 

He also did not receive policy documents which we would automatically have checked had we received them. I assumed they had been emailed to him. Customer services reply to this was that he had received a ‘welcome to Hastings Direct’ email. Quite what relevance this has is anyone guess.

They then said that the additional £1700 works out to £400 a month for 8 months - totalling £3200!

They then said he could cancel this policy and they would give him a new one, with no refund on this one!Then they said they couldn’t give him a new policy.

They have said that the purchase date is relevant to the policy because it would mean that he had more experience driving the car than one that was just purchased so therefore less of a risk. But he didn’t get his licence until last year so he wouldn’t have been driving it anyway!

He sent an email asking for a manager to call to explain that this was a genuine mistake. If he has only had his licence since last year, why would he have owned a car for 4 years, why it had taken 4 months to demand this additional premium, why it wasn’t just an admin charge, and several other questions regarding their adding up! 

He called today as no response to email, and again dealt with customer services who told him its £200 a month and a £400 payment on the last month. Still no call from a manager. Customer services obviously have scripted replies and very frustrating to deal with people who aren’t allowed to use/see common sense or veer from their script. 

He can’t get his policy cancelled because it will effect his premiums for years so he has no choice but to pay a total of £4.1k for a car worth £3k.

Complaints procedure is 8 weeks long and they cancel the policy now and you have to wait for the end of the complaints procedure. So he would have a cancelled policy, no refund, unable to afford a new policy with increased premium due to cancellation  A clever little obstruction! This seems to be typical of Hastings Direct….I even know of one young driver having his one years no claims bonus taken away by them because he changed his address to 2 streets away. 

We obviously can’t deny the purchase date was saved incorrectly but it was a genuine error on the system, not a deliberate act of fraud. The total premium is at least £1500 more expensive than it would have been with another company. 

We have been left with no answers and no choice but to pay it -  it it feels like we’ve been mugged!

Any advice that would help or how to get through to a senior person urgently at this terrible company would be appreciated. 

DE_612183

Have you submitted a complaint and asked for a deadlock letter so you can go to FCA?

sheramber

If he cqncels the policy , rather than them cancelling it, it does not affect future premiums.

It will depend on what it costs to cancel plus what a new policy with another company compared to the new premium for Hastings.

DullGreyGuy

DE_612183 said:

Have you submitted a complaint and asked for a deadlock letter so you can go to FCA?

Maybe you meant the FOS? The FCA doesn't deal with consumer complaints, other than identifying companies operating without authorisation. 

Smvs said:

My son passed his driving test last June, we bought him a 2012 Corsa at the end of October. He got a quote from Compare the Market for Hastings Direct for £2400 with a £700 excess and me as a second driver with 20 years no claims bonus. Checked my myself and my husband. Paid in full at the time.

Fast forward to this week - 4 MONTHS LATER - and he received an email asking for a copy of his log book saying that he had said the purchase date of the car was 2020.when he called them to state he didn’t know what they were talking about, they said it indicated fraud and said if he didn’t pay an additional £1700 the policy would be cancelled.

My son has no experience of dealing with any of this as it’s his first car.

A week of talking to ‘customer services’ is enough to drive us round the twist - it’s torture!

On checking the saved quote on Compare the Market, the date was changed to 2020. It was not input as 2020. This was checked at the time by all of us before it was saved. This has actually previously happened to me when trying to get quotes for my own insurance, but luckily I noticed. 

He also did not receive policy documents which we would automatically have checked had we received them. I assumed they had been emailed to him. Customer services reply to this was that he had received a ‘welcome to Hastings Direct’ email. Quite what relevance this has is anyone guess.

They then said that the additional £1700 works out to £400 a month for 8 months - totalling £3200!

They then said he could cancel this policy and they would give him a new one, with no refund on this one!Then they said they couldn’t give him a new policy.

They have said that the purchase date is relevant to the policy because it would mean that he had more experience driving the car than one that was just purchased so therefore less of a risk. But he didn’t get his licence until last year so he wouldn’t have been driving it anyway!

He sent an email asking for a manager to call to explain that this was a genuine mistake. If he has only had his licence since last year, why would he have owned a car for 4 years, why it had taken 4 months to demand this additional premium, why it wasn’t just an admin charge, and several other questions regarding their adding up! 

He called today as no response to email, and again dealt with customer services who told him its £200 a month and a £400 payment on the last month. Still no call from a manager. Customer services obviously have scripted replies and very frustrating to deal with people who aren’t allowed to use/see common sense or veer from their script. 

He can’t get his policy cancelled because it will effect his premiums for years so he has no choice but to pay a total of £4.1k for a car worth £3k.

Complaints procedure is 8 weeks long and they cancel the policy now and you have to wait for the end of the complaints procedure. So he would have a cancelled policy, no refund, unable to afford a new policy with increased premium due to cancellation  A clever little obstruction! This seems to be typical of Hastings Direct….I even know of one young driver having his one years no claims bonus taken away by them because he changed his address to 2 streets away. 

We obviously can’t deny the purchase date was saved incorrectly but it was a genuine error on the system, not a deliberate act of fraud. The total premium is at least £1500 more expensive than it would have been with another company. 

We have been left with no answers and no choice but to pay it -  it it feels like we’ve been mugged!

Any advice that would help or how to get through to a senior person urgently at this terrible company would be appreciated. 

Complaints processes arent 8 weeks long, 8 weeks is the maximum time the company is allowed for giving their final response after which you can esclate to the Ombudsman even without a response. The average response time is much smaller. 

I bought my first car at 15, passed my test at 17.5 so not 4 years but certainly some do become an owner of a car a while before passing their test. Insurance is intended to be a contract of utmost good faith... the insurer assumes you will answer the questions honestly and you assume that the insurer will pay a valid claim. Some companies trust you until the point of claim, some companies ask you for a long list of evidence on day 1 of your policy. Most companies are somewhere between the two. 

This could become very contentious, and I will admit that I've became very cynical after a decade in call centres, but you say you all checked it when entering the details so who checked the documents when they turned up a few minutes after you clicking the buy button? Why did it take you over 4 months to see that the documents turned up with errors?


If he cancels the policy, having not made any claims, then the remainder of the policy will be refunded less fees. Fees are almost always fixed and if your annual premiums are £350 a year they can eat up most the refund but at £2,400 there should be a substantial refund. You only need to declare cases where the insurer cancels the policy for a material issue. You dont need to declare cases where you cancel the policy or the in-between ones where you want to make a change that they won't accept.