Car Insurance Policy Price Increase

Gardener63

I took out an insurance plan with One Protect on 22 February. I did this through CompareTheMarket, which I accessed through MoneySavingExpert price comparison website. I did this a month in advance of my start date and I paid for 12 months upfront. I then received an email on 23 February saying, "We are pleased to confirm that your application has passed all of our validation checks, and we have now issued your insurance policy, which means your customer portal is now available for you to use".

I received another email, on 16 April, 3.5 weeks after my policy started and 7.5 weeks after the policy was set up and paid for. This email said that I did not inform them of an incident. As a result of this, they said they are charging me a £42.50 ADMINISTRATION FEE and that a letter will be coming in the post with the details.

When I received the letter, it said the incident was a No Fault Accident (our car was parked and the other party claimed responsibility) that happened over a year ago, which I HAD informed them of. The letter also said that I will be charged a £64.94 PREMIUM and a £0.00 ADMINISTRATION FEE. Moreover, I have 14 days from the letter issue date (16 April) to provide evidence that their claim is incorrect, otherwise I'll be charged on 30 April and I will not be able to claim my money back.

The only way to speak to them is through Web Chat, which I did. The person I spoke to said that I need to contact my insurance broker (they didn't state the company name of the insurance broker).

Would my insurance broker be the "Insurance Provider" they have stated on their letter?

How will they have time to stop the charge from my account? Shall I instruct my bank to disable the payment? If so, they could take 'charge' off the money they will have to reimburse me if I cancel the policy. Also, do I have until 29 April to cancel my policy as they have also changed the start date of the policy to 15 April from 23 March on the forms on my customer portal.

I have found no way to contact CompareTheMarket and am unsure of what I can do to sort this. Any guidance would be appreciated.

Also, how do I find my insurance broker as I took the policy out through MoneySavingExpert and Compare The Market.com (I know my insurance company, I just would like to know who the broker is, is it one of the two above or a separate company)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

daveyjp

The paperwork you received when the policy was issued will have details of the incident details you provided. Is it on there? If so that's evidence they did know.

Or did you just provide that info to Compare The Market and not all that info has been carried over to the policy provider?

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6665600/car-insurance-policy-price-increase

Who were you contacting who said to speak to your broker? One Protect are a broker and dont believe they do any wholesale broking (ie selling via another broker).

CompareTheMarket are an aggregator or price comparison site, I'm surprised that they would show up on MSE's tools for price comparisons though as MSE is owned by MoneySupermarket and use its engine (with mods) for its insurance quotes and would be unusual for one aggregator to start recommending another aggregator.

If you log back into CTM you should be able to review the quote details and it will have stored if you did or did not declare the incident.

There is a breed of insurance seller out there that frequently quote very low prices but then go through the application with a fine tooth comb to make sure it's all accurate. The problem is people are often lax, they dont remember exactly when something happened so guesstimate but then sign the declaration stating that this is all correct when the probability is that its in the right ball park but not accurate. These firms then pick up on it and charge an admin fee and additional premium to go from a roughly right but not actually right to the accurate figure.

So with that in mind, if it is on the CTM quote are the dates you gave the same as the dates they are saying the undeclared incident was? If they are different, even by a day, its likely they are assuming they are two different incidents as after all you said the data you gave was accurate and they can accurately see a claim on a different date.

Assuming it's all the same, raise a complaint. Financial Ombudsman is fairly consistent in saying the transfer of data from aggregator to seller is the businesses problem not the consumers even if you are told to check the data and forget/dont bother/dont spot it. If its not the same then thats likely the problem and you will have a fight with them to prove you only had one incident and were sloppy when filling in the quote form.

Next time you speak to them cut out all the crap of the full supply chain… you got a quote from a price comparison site and selected One Protect from the list of quotes received, dont mention you bounced across several different sites.