Car Insurance Admin Fees

[mrs_overall]

A friend of mine has just changed his address and rang his car insurance company to notify them. It took the girl on the phone less than 2 minutes to update his details on the computer while he was talking to her. He has now been stung with an admin fee of £36.
In the small print it states the company charge an admin fee but they do not mention the cost.
He is willing to pay a nominal sum, say £10.
He only made the phone call to them last week and since then he has received a call from them on a daily basis threatening him with all sorts if he doesn't stump up £36 pronto. One of the threats was that they would make sure he was blacklisted and would never get car insurance again from any firm.
Any thoughts on this one please?

[ummmm]

Next job I get I'll volunteer to work for nothing.

[Svejk]

you don't need a second mortgage to change addresses with most firms.

[TWR]

So you think it's right that tapping a few keys to change someone's address is worthy of £36 pounds Ummmm, come off it & get real, that's taking the Pizzzzz

[mccfluff]

i'd find out the ceo and email him/her and yell a lot. i'm with avivia and every time i've had to change anything, they waived the admin fee - which is £18 btw

[ummmm]

It's not as simple as that, TWR. They might tap a few keys while you're on the phone and then they have to go into their accounts package and change the details. It takes longer than two minutes!!

My insurance charged £15 to change my details.

[TWR]

£15 is a big difference from £35 Ummmm, I tell them where to put their Insurance.

[Mamyalynne]

I think what is wrong is not listing their admin rates, then you could factor that in when doing your price comparison before going with that company.

[ummmm]

Then change companies. it's not rocket science.

Some people just love moaning.

[TWR]

Excactly

[factor-fiction]

The charge is very high- normally it's £25 or less.
But as ummmm has said, and as I said earlier, the costs of making a change is more than a few minutes work and companies do have overheads. We've seen statistics before about things like 'it costs £50 to change a light bulb in the civil service'. To take an extreme example, solicitors may charge out their time at £150 an hour, but only maybe £20 of that goes in wages.
Anyway, they should publish their charges, and £36 seems excessive.
Is it definitely all an admin charge or did the move lead toa rating change too?

[TWR]

On this point regards Cost's, ( sorry Mrs O) how many of you out there check, check, & re-check what costs are incurred when getting Quotes etc? myself, I certainly do my homework in every way.

[Svejk]

ColinandJess /// £25 with the AA when I did it a few years back. Happily paid it. ///

And claimed it back of MI5, I expect.

[Svejk]

that's alright.

[Svejk]

you told us yesterday you were a trained agent or have you forgot?

[Mamyalynne]

I think Svejk is getting you confused with Stella Rimington C&J. :-)

[black_cat51]

I wonder if your friend has it wrong Mrsoverall? Do you think maybe it's an increase in premium fort he new address?