Insurance Company took payment even though not with them?

Platty7

Hi so I checked my bank account and found a payment of £266 taken from my account by Quote me Happy, Im not with them & havent been with them for a few years, I contacted them & they confirmed I have no active Policies with them, they will have to raise as a complaint & investigate, I contacted my Bank & they said as its not a DD I cant do an Indemnity claim & have to leave it 15 days before raising it officially with them??, I do not understand how a company can obtain my details & take a payment or is it all fraudulent, will I be entitled to claim compensation for this as I havent authorised any payment with this company for a few years & I can only think they have obtained my details from their sister company Aviva who Im actually with!!!!

dunstonh

 I do not understand how a company can obtain my details & take a payment or is it all fraudulent, will I be entitled to claim compensation for this as I havent authorised any payment with this company for a few years & I can only think they have obtained my details from their sister company Aviva who Im actually with!!!!

No you cannot claim compensation.   
You can ask your bank to refund it as an unauthorised payment not made by you (assuming it as a card payment).

It could be fraud or error but either way, you have not authorised it and the bank should be going through its refund process.  That may well include a change of card as well in case it is fraud.

Aretnap

You can certainly claim compensation - you can claim back the £266 that shouldn't have been taken from your account. 

That's what compensation means - making good the losses that you suffered. Not giving you a huge pile of wonga to punish the insurance company for being shysters or whatever. 

To claim more than £266 you would need to show that you suffered a loss, over and above the money that was taken from your account. Perhaps if a mortgage payment had bounced because there wasn't enough money left and you'd paid penalty fees as a result... that sort of thing. You'd also have to show that it was an error on the part of QMH and not outright fraud by sometime who had obtained your card details somehow.

MyRealNameToo

Platty7 said:
I do not understand how a company can obtain my details & take a payment or is it all fraudulent, will I be entitled to claim compensation for this as I havent authorised any payment with this company for a few years & I can only think they have obtained my details from their sister company Aviva who Im actually with!!!!

Both Quote Me Happy and Aviva Direct are underwritten by Aviva Insurance and so it could be the underwriter holding the card details and so no sharing would be necessary beyond the fact that AIL has no employees and nor has Quote Me Happy as all employees in Aviva are employed by Aviva Employment Services Ltd (a common setup in insurance companies)

You are entitled to be indemnified, ie be in the same financial position you were before the incident, assuming it is an error in billing rather than just the wrong brand name appearing on the statement. 

Anything above indemnity will depend on what's happened. If it were a fraudster then no but anything else you are likely to get a token payment for the inconvenience. 

Compensation is based on what actually happened not on what could have happened.