Aviva Zero can't take a payment from me, what do I do?

RL59

I have had my car insurance through Aviva Zero for two years. Renewal time is here and I've now gone with another company at significantly lower cost.

I logged into my Aviva account and cancelled the renewal.

Having been paying by monthly direct debit I went onto my bank account and cancelled the DD thinking all payments had been taken. My mistake - there was one outstanding payment left for them to take amounting to £54.67, now listed as a "failed" payment on my account.

Since 1st October I have phoned them twice and been told that they are unable to take a payment due to "an IT problem". I have also had this confirmed via email from them, stating that they will "advise me when the IT ticket has been sorted". I've emailed them back again yesterday to confirm I'm trying to pay but that I'm getting increasingly concerned this will end up with affecting my credit rating due to an unpaid instalment, expressing how anxious I am to get this paid and my incredulity that a company is unable to take a payment from a customer. 24 hours later I've had no response to that email.

I don't know what to do next. Any ideas?

RL59

Update: immediately after posting the above I received the latest response:

"I have spoken with my supervisor this morning who has confirmed that the matter is still under investigation by our IT team. We will be in touch with an update as soon as further information becomes available.

Regarding the missed payment and its potential impact on your credit file, my supervisor has advised that, as the amount has only been outstanding for one week, it should not yet affect your credit rating."

"Should not yet affect" has the implication that it will affect at some point going forward. Yet I've been willing and able for a week to make this payment, but they can't take it from me.

Never cancel a direct debit unless you've double checked all payments have been made.

la531983

I mean, wouldn't the payment being late be an accurate summary of the situation ignoring the fact they are taking a while to reinstate it? 

What date was it due on, and what date did you cancel it on?

MyRealNameToo

Most insurers dont report the premium loan to the CRAs so you get neither the positive or negative of them, the one big exception are brokers that use third party finance companies like Premium Credit who do report it as they are a formal lender not an insurer, just tailored to work with insurers. 

Have you looked at your credit record to see if the Aviva loan is even listed?

What is a much more significant risk is them cancelling the policy for non-payment, if they were to do that then you have to declare that for life with most insurer and will have a much bigger impact than a missed payment flag on the CRA which drops off after 6 years but has little consequence as a single flag after a few months. 

Hopefully Aviva having acknowledged their problem will have suspended any process that would auto-cancel the policy after X days of non-payment 

RL59

la531983 said:

I mean, wouldn't the payment being late be an accurate summary of the situation ignoring the fact they are taking a while to reinstate it? 

What date was it due on, and what date did you cancel it on?

The payment being late is an accurate summary. But I'm trying to pay it and can't, which means it's getting later and later.

It was due to be taken on 3rd October, I cancelled the DD about four or five days prior to that, because I thought that the previous months payment was the final one.

RL59

MyRealNameToo said:

Most insurers dont report the premium loan to the CRAs so you get neither the positive or negative of them, the one big exception are brokers that use third party finance companies like Premium Credit who do report it as they are a formal lender not an insurer, just tailored to work with insurers. 

Have you looked at your credit record to see if the Aviva loan is even listed?

What is a much more significant risk is them cancelling the policy for non-payment, if they were to do that then you have to declare that for life with most insurer and will have a much bigger impact than a missed payment flag on the CRA which drops off after 6 years but has little consequence as a single flag after a few months. 

Hopefully Aviva having acknowledged their problem will have suspended any process that would auto-cancel the policy after X days of non-payment 

The policy expires on 11th October (this coming Saturday). But even after it's expired I still want to pay them the outstanding amount for obvious reasons.

Have now asked them if I can make a BACS payment and if not why not.

daveyjp

You have attempted to pay, they know the money is owed, just wait until they ask for it.  If it is part of a wider IT issue Aviva timescale may not meet with yours.

I wouldn't worry about a credit file being affected at this stage.

MyRealNameToo

RL59 said:

MyRealNameToo said:

Most insurers dont report the premium loan to the CRAs so you get neither the positive or negative of them, the one big exception are brokers that use third party finance companies like Premium Credit who do report it as they are a formal lender not an insurer, just tailored to work with insurers. 

Have you looked at your credit record to see if the Aviva loan is even listed?

What is a much more significant risk is them cancelling the policy for non-payment, if they were to do that then you have to declare that for life with most insurer and will have a much bigger impact than a missed payment flag on the CRA which drops off after 6 years but has little consequence as a single flag after a few months. 

Hopefully Aviva having acknowledged their problem will have suspended any process that would auto-cancel the policy after X days of non-payment 

The policy expires on 11th October (this coming Saturday). But even after it's expired I still want to pay them the outstanding amount for obvious reasons.

Have now asked them if I can make a BACS payment and if not why not.

Personal motor insurance is on average written as an underwriting loss, ie they pay out more money in claims and operations than the premiums they receive in. The industry average in the last couple of years has been about 105%

Premiums however arent their only income stream so they can still make a profit overall with cross selling other products, investment returns, referral fees etc but making an underwriting profit or loss is still very important for them. 

As such mass market consumer insurance works as far as is humanly possible with straight through automatic processes which are much cheaper to run than having staff doing stuff manually and then having to have people that manage those staff, people that do quality assurance etc etc. They may not take a BACS/Faster Pay payment because their systems arent setup for such payments and they dont want to maintain the staff and oversight to deal with things that are outside of normal process. 

born_again

As you cancelled the DD, then it is a statement of fact that they could not claim the payment. So should show on your credit history.
The fact they have a issue now taking the payment. Does not affect the fact of the cancelled DD. 
So if they remove the missed payment marker, then you are lucky.