Insurance company charged me £20..........!!!!!

silkyuk9

I am with Master Quote (MQ) for our home contents and building insurance. Anyway, I lost my policy so I rang them up asking would it be possible to have a replacement one sent out.

a week or so later i received a replacement policy document through the post with a demand for a £20 fee.

I rang them up to complain and they said they charge a £20 fee for replacing the documents, I was not having that, i told them that i could understand a fee but you have to tell your customer first to give them the option of having replacent ones sent out. I told the customer service person that at the end of the day i was mot bothered about the policy as i know what im insured for and really only wanted a replacement for the policy number and customer service number if i needed to get in touch.

i even told them that an email from them with the info would have done, and to my amazement they said that would have cost £20 also.

I stood my ground, i was not having any insurance company charge me a £20 fee witout prior notifying me first, to basically give me the option of accepting a replacement or declining it.

the customer service told me to hold the line, and came back saying that his supervisor had said that the fee would be waived.

What a liberty.

At the end of the day we were not informed of the charge so i was damned if i was going to pay for it!

Watch out for this if you ever need a replacemnt policy.

Quentin

Glad you got it waived.

But it isn't the liberty you think it is.

Somewhere in their ts + cs they will have provision to make charges for any extra work you entail them in outside of your insurance contract.

And you caused them extra waork.

Who is supposed to pay the admin costs (paper, envelope, postage, wages, equipment used etc etc) when you lose your documents?

You seem to feel that the company should add something onto all premiums to cover their costs in replacing lost documents. Whose fault is it the document was lost?

dunstonh

Fees do have to be mentioned beforehand so the waiver of it is correct. However, the validity of the charge is also correct (had you been notified at the point of your request).

lisyloo

But it isn't the liberty you think it is.

I don't think the fee itself is a liberty but they should have told the OP up front about the fee, so that they had the option of not going ahead.

I know these things are in the Ts and Cs and I'm certainly the first to say RTFM in some cases, but it's not realistic to expect people to read 300 pages every time they have a minor query.
The OP should have been told this and given the option. In this case they probably would have just asked for details over the phone and not got the document issued so it's the right thing that the fee was waived.

silkyuk9

Quentin wrote: »

Glad you got it waived.

But it isn't the liberty you think it is.

Somewhere in their ts + cs they will have provision to make charges for any extra work you entail them in outside of your insurance contract.

And you caused them extra waork.

Who is supposed to pay the admin costs (paper, envelope, postage, wages, equipment used etc etc) when you lose your documents?

You seem to feel that the company should add something onto all premiums to cover their costs in replacing lost documents. Whose fault is it the document was lost?

I have said i can understand there being a fee, yes of course its work for someone, my point was being charged for something and not been told. if i was told i wouldnt have wanted the replacements. A telephone number and policy number would have been sufficiant for me.