anyone got 1st central car insurance? - MoneySavingExpert.com Forums You are not alone!

You haven't got a hope in hell! You are asking to be refunded £74 even though you never paid the money in the first place! As for compensation - forget it. When you pay by DD, payment requests are lodged with your bank in advance of the date that they leave your account (usually 3 working days). When you then call a company, their systems will show that they have gone in for your payment and at that stage it would not have cleared. This means that the operator would have been giving you correct information at the time, but subsequently your payment 'bounced' as you had cancelled the DD. I think that you know this really and you sound like a bit of a chancer.

Sorry, but this post is absolute rubbish. The FOS have already ruled that administration charges of up to £50 are acceptable, you can look on their website to find the evidence of this. Also, not cancelling a policy following a phone call has got nothing to do with incompetence, cancellation requests should always be put in writing. If a phonecall was sufficient to cancel a policy, anyone could phone up and cancel your insurance without you even knowing! This is a common problem with acrimonious divorces/splits etc where one partner cancels the others policies out of spite. The written cancellation request is there to protect YOU. But hey, let's not let any facts get in the way of a good rant. I'm not defending Gladiator here, the OP may well have some valid issues with them.

Unfortunately, you're going to struggle with this one. The onus is on you as the proposer to ensure that all of your details are correct, when you input your reg no on the site it will have come back with the wrong vehicle at the time, by going ahead with the policy you were confirming that the details were correct. Obviously this is just looking at it in black and white and it is understandable that you may not have noticed or even appreciated that there was a difference with the models but strictly speaking the error was yours for not noticing. I would imagine that the best scenario would be for you to shop around and see what the best price you can get is with the correct model and see if it is worth cancelling and taking out a new policy. The problem will be that any cancellation charge is going to be based on the higher premium. If you can get a cheaper policy elsewhere it may be worth speaking to a manager there, explaining what happened and see if they will be lenient with you on any cancellation charges. It may also be worth asking them to go 50/50 with you on the additional premium. If you speak to them, try not to lose your rag. explain what has happened and that their DVLA search was incorrect, but be prepared for the response that I gave above about you being responsible for checking details. Good luck.

Worldpay are a subsiduary of RBS and are usually associated with on-line credit/debit card payments. As this amount has gone out of your bank account, I would assume that you paid for the policy on-line with your debit card? (e.g. delta, maestro etc). If this is the case then the Direct Debit Guarantee will not apply. Were you paying by instalments?

Who is the Broker?

Hi Gabe, Can you be abit more specific with some info please? 1/ The letter you received on 18th Dec, what was it dated and did it say that they were going to cancel the policy in 7 days (or something similar)? 2/ What exactly did you have to return to them -was it just a proposal form or were there other things? If you can answer these then people may be in a better position to offer some advice (good or bad).

Tractor girl, Who is the Broker? You do not have to pay this charge - they are just trying it on. You are not cancelling the policy if it hasn't come into force, you are lapsing it. Stick to your guns and refuse to pay - nake sure you have taken out new cover from the date that the old one expires - you may ned this to prove that the old policy wasn't needed. Let us know how you get on.

I had problems with my Avensis losing power and so took it to 'Bentley's' Toyota Dealership in Warrington. Was told that the Turbo had gone and would cost £2.5k to replace plus a few other bits taht brought the total bill to nearly 3k. However, they would be prepared to do me a deal on trade in:rolleyes: !! Took the car to another Toyota Dealer elsewhere and guess what? Everything sorted and fixed for under £300. After doing a lot of asking around and research it appears that this garage has a bit of a reputation for trying it on like this. My recomendation to all toyota drivers / potential buyers is don't use this garage !!

An interesting thread this one, hopefully lots of people will read it as the main reason that people fall foul of Insurance is that they don't really understand what it is all about - not really their fault, but it does pay to have some understanding of where your money is going. If I am reading things right, then most of the feedback so far is coming from an Insurer / Bank / Direct Writer perspective (apologies if this is incorect). I'd like to add some input from another angle which hopefully you will find releant to a lot of the complaints that I see on the forum. I have been involved with general insurance for over 20yrs but do not actually work for an Insurer or Broker, so I have no particular axe to grind. The one bit of info missing from the thread so far is the Broker perspective. I don't think that the public realy understand how brokers make their money and so sometimes perceive certain charges as a con. Let me give an example; You buy a motor policy via Confused or any other aggregator for £200. The Broker will probably earn around 10% of that figure as a commission - £20.00. However, they will have to pay the aggregator around £35 for supplying the sale. This means that at the pint that you buy the policy they are £15 down on the deal - before they pay their normal bills - staff, utilties, IT etc etc. The only hope tha they have of ever making any money from the policy is if you buy optional extra's as mentioned previously - legal cover, breakdown etc. Or, if you renew the policy or if you make a change mid term, giving them the oppportunity toapply a fee. This is the reason that cancellation charges are so high these days as if you then cancelled this policy aftersay 3 months, the Insurer will claw back roughly half of the brokers commission in the first year. So the broker is now £25 down on the deal - the aggregator wont give any of their fee back! I could go on and give more examples and am happy to do so if you think it would help. I just felt that this should be highlighted as there are an awful lot of disgruntled punters who have cancelled policies that they bought on-line, and can't understand why they are getting hammered with charges. Sorry for waffling on...........

So it is true, arrogance and ignorance do go hand in hand.......................... 1/ Yes they can - they provided cover and then cancelled due to non payment. You are liable for the time on risk charged based on the CORRECT premium. 2/ This question is irrelevant. They HAVE cancelled the policy. The price agreed was based on you being able to provide a 'valid' NCB, you could not. Some Insurers / Brokers do not help themselves with questionable cancellation/administration charges, there is nothing here that points to this. I am now going to nurse my hang ups.

Re-read your first post... "as this is my 18yr old sons policy". If it is your sons policy, why not insure it in his name? Answer - because you thought it would be cheaper in yours. You are also quite correct as you state that you cannot possibly drive two cars at the same time, therefore would it not be fair to say that your son would be the main user of the 2nd car? You also confirm that the DD bounced because your son was paying it, again this confirms taht this in all intents and purposes was HIS policy, so I don't understand what you are actually complaining about. If you had checked prices in your sons name it would have been very expensive, but hey presto, if you put it in your name and try to use your NCB on it, the price reduces dramatically! I am cynical because this was a policy for your son all along, you thought you had found a way to get the price down in your name and then when you get charged the CORRECT premium, you complain. It might be your car, but in reality it is not for you it is for your son. Sorry if you do not like my response or opinions, but if you post on a forum you have to accept that some people will not automatically take your side. It's nothing personal....

I'm not going to go into the £300 charge as I don't know the detail but all i would say is that by the sounds of it you have not made any payments and so there will be a Time on Risk charge due for the time that you have had on cover. This will be based on the full annual premium without your bonus and so this does not sound too far fetched. BUT...... lets be honest here, you tried to buck the system and get cheaper insurance for your son by putting it in your name and trying to use your bonus that you were already getting the benefits of elsewhere. You have been found out and don't like it. No Insurer will let you use your NCB on more than one policy. Some will allow what they call a 'mirrored' bonus on a second car but not if there are young drivers on the policy. Apologies if I don't sound too sympathetic but people have to realise that Insurance companies are not stupid and it is obvious when someone is trying to get cheaper cover for a young driver. In summary, you have had time on cover and so are liable to pay for it. It is still worth asking for a breakdown of the charge but based on the figures you have quoted (£190 per month), a £300 time on risk does not sound unreasonable.

Sorry, my typo, I've been FSA'd up to the eyeballs today...

OK, a further update for you.... Some people have now received a letter from Hastings confirming the reason for cancellation. It turns out that it was a system error for certain risks. I have lifted this quoted letter extract from another forum... “the reason your policy was cancelled early is that sometime last year a programming error caused the system to quote incorrectly for Highway Choice policies for 2 types of business:- 19 year olds – post code area 40.” So there you have it - the error lies with Hastings and not Highway. I am not personally affected by this but if it was me I would do two things:- 1/ Contact Highway directly (see previous posts for the reasons). 2/ Register a complaint with the FSA. Every time that the FSA investigate a complaint, the Broker is charged approx £375 for the pleasure regardless of the outcome. It may not get you your cover back but at least you will have the satisfaction of knowing that they are out of pocket! If all 3000 odd affected customers did this, well, you do the maths.....

Interesting take on things, most organisations seem to be concious of 'TCF' at the point of sale but not so much post-sale. The FSA have defined the aims of 'TCF' in 6 points (from the FSA web site): - "We have defined 6 consumer outcomes which explain what we want TCF to achieve for consumers. Outcome 1: Consumers can be confident that they are dealing with firms where the fair treatment of customers is central to the corporate culture; Outcome 2: Products and services marketed and sold in the retail market are designed to meet the needs of identified consumer groups and are targeted accordingly; Outcome 3: Consumers are provided with clear information and are kept appropriately informed before, during and after the point of sale; Outcome 4: Where consumers receive advice, the advice is suitable and takes account of their circumstances; Outcome 5: Consumers are provided with products that perform as firms have led them to expect, and the associated service is both of an acceptable standard and as they have been led to expect; Outcome 6: consumers do not face unreasonable post-sale barriers imposed by firms to change product, switch provider, submit a claim or make a complaint." I would say that 5 & 6 would be the points most pertinent to the circumstances. However, the definition of "unreasonable" in point 6 would be the contentious point. The problem with the FSA is that in broad terms they are based on principles and acting in the spirit of the rules and so a lot of their messages (like point 6) can be ambiguous. Has anyone actually tried speaking to Highway themselves yet? If so, what was the response? Further reading on 'TCF' can be found at: -http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/policy/ps07_11.pdf Be warned, it is a mind numbing read..... Could the fact that hastings are cancelling evertyones policies be classed as 'TCF' ???

This may be no use to you, but if you had home insurance at the time, check to see if you had a legal expenses policy in force as some of these will provide free legal advice at the very least. Hope everything goes well for you from now on.

Thanks for the advice folks......

Some information for you, I have been doing a bit of digging and it looks like Hastings have contacted between 3000 - 3500 people by telephone confirming that their policies will be cancelled in 7 days. It looks like they have had a problem with their systems as they have been quoting incorrect premiums both on-line and by phone. The problem is that the holding Insurer (in this case Highway) are within their rights to withdraw cover if the Broker (in this case Hastings) has misquoted. Not ideal I know and morally wrong. I would suggest that you contact Highway directly and get their take on it. It is worth finding out if it is just a case of the quoted premium being wrong or if normally they would not have accepted your risk. If it is the former then then the error lies purely with Hastings and Highway may (this is a big if!) take your side and allow the cover to stand - this would then be a dispute between highway and hastings for the balance of premium. It is a long shot, considering the number of people affected, but you have got nothing to lose by trying.

To the tune of Runaround Sue..... Here's my story, sad but true, about some jeans, coloured blue, got a bargain, or so i thought, now a lesson, I've been taught.... Ahem, sorry about that, can anyone offer any advice on the following... My partner bought a brand new pair of jeans from Jane Norman. They were ofered with a 10% discount as there was a slight stain on the leg which the assistant said should wash off. So in a sense they were "sold as seen". However, when the jeans were washed, the stain got worse/bigger. Further investigation (turning them inside out) revealed that it was not in fact a stain at all, but a red ink stamp on the inside of the leg that had ben applied by the manufacturers. My partner took the jeans back and pointed this out, she saw thw same assistant who had sold her them. The assistant agred that had they known that the stamp was there, they would not have offered them for sale, but because we had accepted the 10% discount it was tough! After a bit of debate, she agreed to send the jeans off to their customer service people to see if they would allow a refund. Guess what? No joy. Do we have (pardon the pun) a leg to stand on here or are we doomed because we accepted the 10% discount? Please help.....

Is this a serious post? When you pay your motor insurance by DD it does not mean that it is a monthly policy. There is an annual premium due and you are simply opting to spread the cost. If you have had a claim paid out on the policy then you still have to cover the annual premium. I understand that people get upset when they are hit with unreasonable charges but lets not get carried away. If you took out a loan for 5k over 5 years to buy a car, then sold the car after 2 years, would you therefore expect not to have to pay the rest of the loan because you no longer had the car?

A couple of things spring to mind with this. When you took out the policy you would have been sent either a proposal form to sign or a statement of insurance. Both of these would contain all of the details that your policy was based on. you should check this to see if the 2 sp's were on there. if they are then the broker hasn't got a leg to stand on, however, if they are not there then you are stuck as even if you did tell them verbally, you have accepted the details on the form as the basis of the contract. Also, it is feasible for the premium to jump so high if you did not have any NCB for this policy, you may well have been given a large introductory discount with the insurer which would not have been available if the convictions were declared. if you can't find the forms, ask them for a copy - they will be able to provide one.

There is a valuable lesson hidden away in this thread... Most people seem to think that price comparison / aggregator websites such as confused, moneysupermarket, uswitch etc are there to provide a service! Do people actualy realise that these companies make huge profits and charge the Brokers a fee for each sale that is made (around £40 on average). As the sites are also selling purely on price, the brokers are also having to cut their commissions to appear at or near the top of the list and so usually ending up selling the policy at a loss! So is it any wonder that they apply high charges? Sooner or later the great british public will wake up to the extremely clever marketing that they are subjected to. Companies like confused do not provide a public service, they are extremely clever, profitable and ruthless businesses.