£50 penalty for changing my mind?

cg163

Got a quote through a comparison site for home insurance. Paid the amount although policy not due to start until 16th November. Then my current insurer (I know, it always happens) came up with a considerably better price. went to cancel the new policy (intelligent Finance) who refunded my paid premium less £50! (cancelled well within 24 hours) they said because I went through a comparison site i had agreed to a £50 cancellation charge. Is this right? Doesnt the 14 day cooling off rule apply here? An expensive lesson learned!

luci

cg163 said:

Got a quote through a comparison site for home insurance. Paid the amount although policy not due to start until 16th November. Then my current insurer (I know, it always happens) came up with a considerably better price. went to cancel the new policy (intelligent Finance) who refunded my paid premium less £50! (cancelled well within 24 hours) they said because I went through a comparison site i had agreed to a £50 cancellation charge. Is this right? Doesnt the 14 day cooling off rule apply here? An expensive lesson learned!

What did the T&Cs you agreed to when you took out the policy say?

Aretnap

The 14 day "cooling off" rule gives you a right to cancel, not a right to cancel for free. The insurer is still allowed to charge a reasonable fee to reflect the costs of setting up, selling and closing the policy. There is no specifically prescribed amount that they can charge, but the Financial Ombudsman has found fees of more than £50 to be reasonable in the past.

After 14 days you have no statutory right to cancel at all, but most insure will still show you to do so, making the 14 day proof less important than a lot of people tend to think. If you bought through a comparison sure for example the insurer will have had to pay the comparison site an amount of money for selling the policy through them, so will be allowed to include that in their justification for why the cancellation fee is reasonable.

dunstonh

they said because I went through a comparison site i had agreed to a £50 cancellation charge. Is this right? Doesnt the 14 day cooling off rule apply here? An expensive lesson learned!

yes its right.
It's a myth that the cancellation rights period is free of charge.   They are allowed to charge their published cancellation charge and pro-rata for time on cover.

cg163

Thank you for your responses. A lesson learned.

twopenny

Indeed! 
Thanks for posting because I wasn't aware of that.
Crikey!

Isthisforreal99

It's almost like these companies don't want to work for free.....

MyRealNameToo

Isthisforreal99 said:

It's almost like these companies don't want to work for free.....

Likewise their landlords arent willing to gift them their office space, Dell really arent keen on donating them their servers and laptops, utilities companies have the check to charge them for their electricity and gas, the FCA also won't work for free and want levies paid etc etc.