My car slid in the snow, scuffing another car, no damage, someone told my insurance company..- now my NCD/ins renewal has been refused!!

[Ethel Street]

I'm not fully clear on what has happened.

 

When was the renewal date of your policy? Is your insurer saying that they will not renew your policy? If so have they explained why?

 

The answer to "Or can I still use my NCD bonus despite them robbing me of it???" is No. The only thing another insurer will accept is what your last insurer say is your NCD on the renewal notice. You have no other way of evidencing 3 years NCD.

[Ethel Street]

The refusal to renew is a more serious problem for you than the NCD right now. When getting quotes you will always be asked if an insurer has ever cancelled or refused to renew a policy and you will have to answer 'Yes'. The likely consequence of that is many insurers will refuse to quote, or will quote high premiums.

 

From the information in your post I can't understand why your insurer is refusing to renew. You need to call them and try to get to the bottom of this. Tell them that refusal to renew is putting you in an impossible position with finding alternative insurance. Even if the incident had resulted in a claim against and your insurer paying it the amount would have been very small. Insurers don't normally refuse to renew if there has just been one small accident. [EDIT just seen the link to your previous thread. I will read it, that may explain insurer's attitude]

 

Do you have a prior history of accidents and convictions and your insurer is treating this as the 'last straw'?

[Ethel Street]

On January 4th insurer told you they considered you may be in breach of policy condition for failure to report an incident [my emphasis].  I guess that is why they are now refusing to renew the policy.

 

"...we have been notified by a third party that your vehicle was involved in an accident on 00/00/00.

You have not notified us of this claim and therefore you may be in breach of the conditions of your policy.

We need to investigate further before we can decide whether we can deal with the claim, until we let you know in writing nothing said or done or anyone acting for us should be understood as confirming our position. "

 

You sent them the photos they asked for on January 9th.  There were no further updates posted after that. What has happened since January 9th?

 

The non-renewal is the big problem for you. The NCD issue will solve itself - if there is no claim after 6 months it should be reinstated.

 

Concentrate on getting the insurer to offer you renewal.

[Ethel Street]

Start by telling us what has happened since you sent your insurer the photos on January 9th

[Ethel Street]

On what date?

 

Did you keep a copy of the Live Chat conversation?  You usually have the option to download the conversation. Post up the text here please (personal identifiers removed).

 

Did they ever send you anything else about the incident? Or anything else at all before you got the email (a week ago?)  telling you they wouldn't renew?

 

Please post the text of the email here as well.

 

Who is the insurer?

[Ethel Street]

@mrk123  Sounds like progress. Bear in mind that typically the claims deprtment decides about NCD but it's up to the (separate) underwriting department whether to renew and at what £££.

 

If it helps, if I were discussing this with the insurer I would be stressing these points.

 

1. The incident occurred on December 29th 2021, you notified them when you got their text January 4th 2022. That's a time period of only 3 working days (2 if you don't count New Years Eve as a working day). 

 

2. You had taken photos at the time for insurers to provide them with information they would need. That is evidence of your intention to report the incident at the earliest practicable opportunity.

 

3. The accident was trivial, minor dent/scratch to bumper. It was not a moving traffic accident (ie neither car was being driven) and no-one was injured

 

4. You provided information about it to the police [on the day of the accident(?)] to ensure an independent report on the circumstances  was available to insurers

 

5. Since your initial report to insurers on January 4th you have provided them with everything they have requested promptly. You note that since January 4th they have not sought any further information or carried out any investigations so they presumably had all the information they needed by that date, less than a week after the accident.

 

6. In consequence of the above the insurers have not been prejudiced or disadvantaged in any way  in their ability to deal with any claim if one had come in. And no claim has come in.

 

Good luck. FWIW insurers non-renewal decision seems very harsh in the circumstances so hopefully when you get to discuss it with a real human being decision maker all will be well. I suspect that if you had to make a complaint to the Insurance Ombudsman/FOS your insurer would find it hard to demonstrate that non-renewing your policy was 'treating the customer fairly'.