More Than Auto Renewal Nightmare

Evening all,

I'm looking for your advice and experience with regards car insurance auto renewal.

In January last year I switched car insurance providers to Esure after two years with More Than, saving £200pa in the process. My More Than online portal shows no policies beyond 30th January 2017. Likewise, I have no paper or electronic records of any new policies being established in my name.

Today, during a banking "Spring Clean", I've noticed that a Direct Debit has been being taken by More Than every month since January 2017. Clearly my policy has been auto-renewed, yet I received no details of this: no new policy number sent to me digitally or by mail and no new policy appearing in my online portal.

I found a More Than policy number on the Direct Debit instruction which I've now looked up and my suspicions were correct: a new policy was created in my name with a new policy number that was not linked to my online account. As I received no paper documents relating to this new policy, and no e-mails either, the only way of knowing this policy existed was through the Direct Debit.

Obviously I am an idiot for not recognising this Direct Debit sooner (I'd been mistaking these payments for my Esure policy, which I'd in fact paid upfront on a credit card), but something doesn't seem right that the details of the new policy wouldn't be readily available to me, seriously increasing the likelihood of a mistake like this occurring.

I am wondering if anyone else has suffered in a similar way with More Than or other companies? I have effectively paid them £614 over the last year...for nothing! What are the chances I'd be able to get this refunded?

Cheers!