car insurance prolems

[daginge]

If through no fault of your own you arrange car insurance with incorrect details and the insurance company subsequently cancel the insurance and claim you owe them a standard arrangement fee and a cancellation fee, which just so happens to be the equivalent of the deposit you already paid, do you have any right in law?

[buildersmate]

Perhaps you'd better make the assertion "through no fault of my own" to your insurance company as evidently they don't currently say it that way.
Alternatively you could outline the scenario here and a few people will perhaps comment. Whose "fault" do you think it is that led the insurance company to have duff information?

[redcrx]

"do you have any right in law?"

presumably youll have read all terms and conditions laid out by the insurer

[daginge]

I mistakenly neglected to renew Mrs DGs car insurance. She got pulled today for no insurance which she explained. Stopping PC said it was most likely a genuine mistake. However car got towed due to the law. So being a decent citizen she went and arranged insurance paid the deposit and took the cert to the local station for the release to be authorised. For some reason she was then cautioned by a different PC, they informed the insurance who said the policy is now null and void. This means A) Mrs is appearing in court at some stage, B) we can't get the car back and now C) we are going to have to pay £20 per day for car storage plus £155 release fee and D) to cap it all insurers say we owe them what we paid for fees because we gave false info. The latter is an absolute crock because at the time there was no conviction or impending conviction.

[boxtops]

I don't understand why PC2 says the insurance is invalid - she accepts she didn't have it when stopped, but she does now?

[daginge]

It's the insurer that says it's invalid, what I can't understand is why PC2 rang the insurer despite production of certificate of insurance????

[factor-fiction]

Had you tried to backdate the insurance to before the time she was stopped?

I still don't know what you mean by "arrange car insurance with incorrect details". What were the incorrect details?

Maybe the insurer has decided you failed to declare that your wife had been stopped for driving uninsured and have therefore refused insurance now they know. What did PC2 say?

[factor-fiction]

I expect PC2 was probably simply telling the insurance company the insurance had been issued after the time the police had stopped her

[redcrx]

your wife couldnt have backdated it to cover when she was stopped, the insurers systems wont allow that.

[New Judge]

You need to explain a bit more.

(A) and (B) and (C) in your earlier post are police procedures which resulted from the first instance where your wife was stopped and found to be uninsured and from her visit to the nick when it was established that the policy that had ben taken out was invalid

What I don't understand from the info you have provided is why the insurers have made your new policy void. "...the insurance who said the policy is now null and void." "...because we gave false info." Have you established what the false info is said to be?

[daginge]

New Judge
False info was that she failed to state the car had been towed. She said, she had been stopped, found to have no insurance, and needed to get insurance so she could go and retrieve her car. The lady at the insurers said "We can't assume the car had been taken by the police, we might have thought she was picking it up from her children's school" what a fantastic piece of fiction that would be? Surely though as up until that point there was no indication of deceitful wrong doing, albeit she was driving uninsured at the time, how can she tell them she has an impending conviction. Oh by the way the car is at a Warrington garage, not an official DVLA, impound yard!

[redcrx]

so was she trying to backdate it from the date the renewal should have been?

[daginge]

No it was a fresh policy stating from Noon today.

[BagPussAA]

The reason that PC2 rang the insurer to check rather than just accept the certificate is that it is common practice amongst people who are not as law abiding as they should be to get the certificate of insurance and then cancel the policy. They then produce the certificate and say "the car is insured" when in actual fact it isn't. This is fairly standard police procedure to ring and check with the insurer.

[joko]

you cannot buy insurance as of noon today and expect it to cover you for a single minute before that date and time...

this new insurance does not cancel out the fact that she was driving uninsured...she is still guilty and will still be in trouble for it - it just means she is allowed to now collect and drive the vehicle

if you could just go and buy insurance immediately after being caught and therefore get off scot free , then everyone would just do that... it doesnt work that way...

however as you have bought a policy clearly to try to get yourself out of trouble and not told them of that trouble, then of course the policy is void... you lied...maybe inadvertantly, but its still an untruth... you withheld information that would have drastically affected the price of the premium.

the 'no fault of your own' is in fact totally your fault -
you 'mistakenly' forgot to renew - your fault,
you misinformed them on the new policy - your fault

i think maybe you have misunderstood what this new insurance would cover...

[daginge]

There was no attempt to get off "scot free" there was a release fee of £155 for a start. Neither was there any attempt made to back date the insurance cover. We are not a pair of skanks, we are an honest family the father of whom made a mistake. I simply feel it is wrong that when contributory factors brought on by the insurer leads to an additional problem it is unfair of them to not return our deposit after approximately 1 hour. If my wife had been cautioned instantly and informed that she would as of then have a pending motoring conviction we would have investigated insuring the car differently, as it was she was told by PC 1 that it would probably be OK as it seemed a genuine mistake.
Thank you all for your time and interest.

[sinderella]

what some unscrupulous people were doing is phoning up the insurance ,picking up the car , then "changing" their mind and phoning up and cancelling the policy.