Had this happen recently, my insurance (with eSure) was due to expire and because it shot up in price I decided to go with another company. So I replied to their renewal email asking them to cancel it/not renew. And just to be on the safe side I tried to log in to my account and cancel that way but it would not send me a password reset email. So then I call them. It seems they did everything in their power to make it difficult to cancel.
A bit suspicious of this I cancelled my direct debit.
Fast forward a couple of months and I get a threatening email saying I owe them money and interest, so I explain that I cancelled it! They did not believe me and wanted me to send them a copy of my new insurance policy, which I did, and then never heard back from them.
What’s really annoying is that I was actually considering not insuring my care for 6 months (until the summer, as I rarely use the car now) so had I decided to do that (and so unable to send them my new policy) they would no doubt got their atrocious renewal costs and/or interest out of me! Apparently the law/contracts has changed so they can auto-renew.
So if you cancel your insurance, make sure you get some sort of proof - and avoid eSure, because they’re acting more like crooks!
I have always hated dealing with insurance people, biggest crooks going…besides politicians.
I also use a compare site every year and I always make sure I am not put on auto renew. I am with Tesco just now and they had no bother not putting me on auto. They were pretty reasonable with their quote too.
Wow, is that legal in the UK? Over here that is absolutely not possible. Companies would be fined and legal action would be taken if they ever tried that, they wouldn’t try anyway. It has become illegal since 2013, more or less, but this never happened before anyway. When our policy expires, it’s up to us whether we want to renew it with the same company or change if we get offered a better price, otherwise it just remains expired.
It is only legal for insurers to auto-renew your car insurance contract, if they have let you know that’s what they’ll do. It should be on emails or paperwork they send to you.
I always make sure any new policy is not on Auto-Renew when I first take it out and diarise a Reminder about a month before it is due to expire, to give me time to shop around - although I think the existing insurance company are supposed to send you notice of expiry about four weeks before.
If you had decided to take your car off the road for a few months and not taken out a new insurance policy, then I think the law requires you to complete a SORN notification for the time it is not insured, so confirmation of the SORN would probably have sufficed to prove you did not intend to renew your insurance policy.
That’s only required if you do not want to tax it I think @Boot (I was going to keep it taxed and mot’d just wasn’t going to bother with insurance for a while knowing I wouldn’t be driving it).
I’m fairly sure that SORN rules apply to uninsured vehicles as well as untaxed vehicles, Azz.
It comes under the rule of “continuous insurance enforcement”
Ah right. IIRC if the car is not taxed and there’s no SORN then you will be liable for tax - but if it is not insured and you don’t drive it then nothing happens re the insurance. Basically, the govt want their tax no matter what… unless you go to the trouble of sorn’ing it
