Admiral Insurance Complaint

Shoshannah

My boyfriend has recieved appalling service from Admiral Insurance and is going to write a letter of complaint. I don't complain a lot (well, not formally :rotfl: ) as to be honest I have been lucky enough not to need to. Should he expect to recieve any form of compensation when he writes to them; should he expect any acknowledgement at all?

He had two cars insured on a MultiCar policy. All was fine for a year, but he sold one of the cars and bought a replacement. The problems started when he called Admiral to inform them of this change of vehicle. He only wanted to update the policy. He paid by monthly direct debit and there was one month left on the policy by this point.

He was told everything had been updated and that he would have to pay an additional £40 to cover both cars for the remaining month on the policy.

Letters came through from Admiral a few days later. One was the insurance schedule, which contained incorrect details ( for example, it stated the new car had an alarm which it did not, I had listened to my boyfriend's conversation so I witnessed him tell them it was not alarmed). Another informed him of his 'new breakdown cover' for £7 a month, which had not been mentioned on the phone call and which he did not need. The final letter informed him that a total of £70 (please note, NOT the £40 he was told on the phone) would be withdrawn from his bank account on 20th February. But this letter did not arrive until the 23rd February.

After reading these letters he rang Admiral straight away. He sorted out the incorrect car details and cancelled the breakdown cover. He also addressed the matter of the payment coming from his bank account with -3 days notice. He was told they could not cancel the payment from their end and that he would have to call his bank. They also said they would take the correct amount of money at the next usual instalment date, the 1st March.

As it was a couple of days before payday, my boyfriend did not have enough money in his account. Despite calling the bank to cancel, it was too late and the money had already gone. He subsequently accumulated bank charges for going over his overdraft limit. Fortunately, given the circumstances, the bank reversed everything including the charges.

After this hassle, boyfriend was truly fed up of Admiral by this point. At renewal time he was only too glad to switch back to his previous insurer, MoreThan, and even though he is paying slightly more their customer service seems ten times better.

But worse was to come.

Despite calling Admiral that time to arrange for their final payment to go out of his account on 1st March, the money didn't go. His bank had cancelled the old direct debit and Admiral had not set up the new one. Boyfriend called them to make the last payment over the phone, at which time he also told them he wanted to cancel his policy; he had set up the MoreThan policy earlier that day. They said that was fine and that they had cancelled the policy.

Three weeks later, yet another letter from Admiral dropped through the door. Confirmation of the cancellation? No. The opposite. It was confirmation of a non-existant renewal and a demand for £500 to cover the year's policy, since he had failed to pay by direct debit (well duh). Luckily, their own incompetence had prevented them from setting up the direct debit again!

He called Admiral yet again and asked to be put through to the Complaints department. Despite being forwarded to a random reception desk somewhere instead, he finally managed to get through to Complaints where the lady told him the previous woman had !!!!!!ed up the cancellation and that it was their fault. She cancelled everything (again). Hopefully this is the last we will hear of it.

So, the two things that this post is leading me on to say are:

1. Don't use Admiral insurance if you can help it.

2. Is he likely to recieve anything in return for the financial harrassment they have caused him, taking money from his account without permission, causing him to accumulate bank charges and threatening him with legal action over money he did not owe? Or should he just be glad he's got away from them and leave it?

Thanks for reading anyway, it was rather a long post!

goldspanners

ive got a thread up here about admiral to.
they can cancel pending payments they done it for me.
dont expect them to call you back,you will need to keep on at them.
i found mentioning reporting them to the FSA got things moving quickly.

anewman

I think the question is what are his losses. If Admiral owe him no monies (i.e. he has only paid the money for the services he asked for), then the only thing Admiral is legally responsible for, is the hassle and wasted time, which I imagine unfortunately courts would not consider to have a significant monetary value.

The breakdown cover thing, instead of asking the call centre operator just slapped it on so they could meet the target/get the bonus etc. Isn't it peculiar how I can figure that out instantly, yet the people at Admiral will act like he asked for it, even if he says he didn't, and not have a clue.

As for is he likely to get anything, they will only be likely to give anything if legally required, and if it's a goodwill gesture they're giving it would probably just be money off their insurance or something. I'd just give them a piece of my mind and not expect anything, and end the letter with something like "I intend to make as many people as possible aware of the disgraceful service I received as a customer of Admiral and recommend as many people as possible not to use your insurance services." They probably won't care, but there we go anyway.

flutterbyuk25

anewman wrote: »

The breakdown cover thing, instead of asking the call centre operator just slapped it on so they could meet the target/get the bonus etc. Isn't it peculiar how I can figure that out instantly, yet the people at Admiral will act like he asked for it, even if he says he didn't, and not have a clue.

As an ex-Admiral employee I can confirm that is exactly what happens.

In training you are told to automatically include extras like breakdown cover into the quote/cost and neglect to mention it unless you are specifically asked for a breakdown of cost.

The agent gets commission (its was £4 per breakdown cover when I was there in 2003) plus person who sold most in a month won a prize like a weekend break or vouchers.

x

brummiedevil

Insurance companies are no longer allowed to just add products onto a policy without giving the customer the cost and the option to say no.

My advice to you would be to send in a written complaint and mention that you are considering going to the FSA also as it costs insurance companies £400 for the FSA to take the case whether the insurance companies win or lose. To avoid paying the fee in most cases you would get a letter of apology and maybe some compensation to cover the cost of calls etc.

FazerWiz

Admiral took a substantial amount of money (over £800) from my account without permission two months after the policy ran out. I believe that they have a policy of always taking money from people's accounts of they possibly can - even if you cancel it which must be against the code of practice if not against the law.

For starters, they sold me a policy which I later found out in the small print was 10 months long. I mean, who else sells 10 moths policies - surely it's always for a year right?

After 10 months I told them that I wouldn't be renewing and cancelled it. I had heard about thier practice of always taking the money so I spoke to a member of staff called Lee, noted the time and day and got is absolute assurance that he had definately wouldn't be taking the money from my account. Now in December (some two months later) they debit over £800 (the insurance was for my son who is only 19) from my account. What's even worse is that they refused to refund the money until I gave them details (policy number and company) of who I renewed with! I asked what that had to do with them and they said that was the only way they'd refund me - so what if I'd sold the car?

Anyway, I'd never use them again. Once they have your card details they will carry on taking you money no matter what you say to them. Be very careful if you do have a policy with them. :mad:

Rubanselva

Just found out that if you don't tell them that you are cancelling they automatically renew the policy - very thoughtful of them!

oldagetraveller

Rubanselva wrote: »

Just found out that if you don't tell them that you are cancelling they automatically renew the policy - very thoughtful of them!

As do lots of policies throughout the industry.
This will have been in the ts & cs and/or the literature from them. When the renewal comes through there should have been an option to not renew.
My last two insurancies have been on this basis, as is my current AA membership (insurance policy) and motor policy.
I personally think it is a bit naughty but it just shows how important reading ALL the small print is. In fact to be fair it's never been in smaller print than that on the rest of the documents!

supermotopad

I have just had the pleasure of cancelling my policy. They forgot to mention it costs £49.00 + £5.00 per add on (breakdown cover, legal cover, etc) when i took a policy out with them.

cutandshut

If you think Admiral are bad you should try 1st Central. I had 2 policies with them and they didn't even send me a renewal notice.

jhnsmth

I used to work for them (until very recently, when they fired me for having ethics), and I can confirm that policies have changed slightly since flutterbyuk25 worked there.

They are no longer trained to automatically add extras (thanks to the FSA), however they are now forced to add as many extras as possible (and more importantly, stop customers from removing them) just to keep their jobs. They are still required to advise the customer of the cost associated with extras, and they are still required to explain to the customer that the extra is optional, and confirm that the customer wants them to add it.

The problem, however, is what happens when you try to call them up to remove said extra. The employees are targeted as a ratio of how many extras you add versus how many you remove (value in Pounds). If the employee removes more extras than they add during any given month they are in the negative, and are disciplined. Here's an example: adding a Breakdown at 72.95, but removing 3 Hire cars at 29.95 each -> 89.85 - 72.95 = 16.90 in the negative.

This forces the employee to argue with the customer and try to talk them into keeping the extra on the policy, by any means necessary. If a call gets listened to by a manager and the employee simply removes an extra without question when the customer asks, they are pulled aside and told that they are not treating the customer fairly, and disciplinary action is taken.

For instance, a customer takes out a policy on their old car and adds Breakdown cover. 2 months before their renewal date the following year, they buy a brand new car from a dealer, who includes Breakdown cover for 2 years with the purchase of the new car. When his policy with Admiral comes up for renewal 2 months later, he calls Admiral, speaks to the agent in the renewal department for the sole reason of removing the Breakdown cover, since he gets it for free. The employee says "No problem", and removes the Breakdown cover.

You would think that there is nothing wrong with this scenario, but Admiral has a different point of view. They don't care if the customer is getting the same product they offer for free somewhere else, they still want you to pay for it. I'm speaking from experience, because the instance I mentioned above refers to a policy I dealt with shortly before I was fired, and it was also used as an example of my "insubordination" during my disciplinary meeting.

I was actually told by my manager on the day I was fired that I was not treating this customer fairly because (and I quote) "I did not try to talk the customer into paying for something he gets for free".

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Not to mention that they currently have a policy in effect whereby, without the customers' knowledge, they will future-date the expiry date of their customers' expired credit cards before the policy's renewal date comes up to ensure they get paid. In other words, if you are an Admiral customer renewing your policy in December 2010, but your credit card you gave them last year expired in, say July 2010, they will change that card's expiry date to July 2012 to make sure the system applies for payment. They do this behind the scenes, without advising the customer they are falsifying their financial information. If the customer calls to complain about money being taken from their expired card, they are refunded. If the customer pushes for more information and asks why payment was taken from an expired card, they are told to contact their card provider.