Car Insurance - Have I Been Ripped Off?

Lyrrad

Hi

I would really like feedback on this one.


About this time last year I used this fantastic website to get myself some car insurance.

After choosing Esure all was okay until I got a letter through the post stating that I had witheld some information.

Cut a long story short, I did not disclose the fact that in Dec 06 I had asked my previous insurance company for a claim form as someone has keyed my car. I never went ahead with the claim, and in fact after being prompted by the said insuance company, I confirmed I was not going to persue the matter.

However Esure told me that I should have notified them, and put my premium up by about 8%. (Not bad for recieving a claim form and binning it - We are talking £40 here too).

I complained and got Esure to meet me half way, so it only cost me an extra £20.

Now it comes to renewel, and this 'incident' is labelled as

Cause: Accident
Status: Settled
Recovery Made: Yes


Esure tell me it wont affect my premiums as it does not constitute a blame claim, yet I still am finding some insurance companies will not quote me as I have had too many claims, or they are stating that my premium is high because of the amount of claims.


Surely a request for a claim form, and then the choice not to proceed with the claim cannot be put down in the archives against me as


Cause: Accident
Status: Settled
Recovery Made: Yes



Any feedback would be most welcome.

Altarf

Insurance is a contract of 'utmost good faith', and you are required to tell the insurance company everything that they would need to know to decide the risk.

That includes telling them about every incident that the insurance company would reasonably want to know about, whether or not you choose to make a claim. So even if you did not send off for a claim form, then you should have still told them about the keying incident.

You may argue that as you made no claim, it was nothing to do with them, but if for example your car had been broken into 6 times, but nothing of value was stolen and no damage was done, so you didn't bother to claim, are you a bigger risk to the insurance company than might appear from your claims history? Obviously you are, so the insurance company needs to charge you a higher premium.