I really wouldn't waste your time contacting admiral again. They have followed the correct process (as i explained in my last post) and have now issued you with their final decision. Writing to them again wouldn't change this in this slightest. As the letter states, your next step from here would be to contact the FOS. In all honesty though, i cant see them getting involved as admiral haven't done anything wrong. My advice? Take the offer and chalk it up to experience. DA

Obviously insurance is a business so of course they're there to make money. However, with the introduction of the 14 day cooling off period by the FSA a few years ago, there is no point in the companies auto renewing policies maliciously as everyone seems to suggest. All the customers would do is ring in and cancel and get their money back which would actually cost the insurer money by having to issue documentation for the policy, process the cancellation, refund the money and then send out more documentation to confirm the policy has been cancelled. D.A

The XS is the amount that you contribute towards a claim. How this is done varies from company to company but usually yes, you would have to pay it to your insurers when you make "fault" claim or one where liability is in dispute. The insurers will then pursue the claim on your behalf and, if successful as you were, your XS will be returned to you. As far as i know, you cant claim back any interest for the time that your XS was retained by the insurer, but hypothetically, you would need to speak to the claims department and they would claim it back from the third party. D.A

So to clarify... The insurer offered to replace the items that were stolen which would have cost them £1200. (cover would have been new for old so would have got like for like replacements or equivalent spec/value if not) Your brother in law declined this and wanted a cash settlement instead, which he is within his rights to do. So Direct Line sent him a cheque for the £1200 it would have cost them to replace the items. I don't see what the issue is here. You cant expect them to pay out £1800 based on what you say the items are worth, they would only pay out what they can prove they are worth, and of course they would use their own suppliers, in this case anglian fishing. You can go to 5 different tackle shops and get 5 different prices for the same rod, would you pay the highest or the lowest price? IMO you haven't got an argument here as they have paid out the correct amount. D.A

I agree in principle with what you're saying. At the end of the day, if you have called the insurer in plenty of time to stop the policy being renewed, and they haven't done that, then that is really bad service from the insurer and needs to be followed up by their complaints procedure. The same rule applies for refunds on cards as for direct debits. Confirmation that the payment has cleared has to be received before the refund can be applied back to the card/bank account. I don't actually agree with automatic renewals and i very rarely offer it to the customers i deal with (although it is part of our scripts) as i believe its the customers choice whether to renew or not, we shouldn't assume they want to renew unless we hear otherwise. However, i still stand by what i said in that this isn't a [problem] or a con, its just technology moving forward and the computer operators just simply not following the correct processes. D.A

Assuming you dad has the "driving other cars" cover on his own policy, (which you state he has) then that automatically covers him for any damage he causes to third party property, be it a car, a person or a physical object (like a lamppost or a house) whist he is driving a car not owned by him. Your gran needs to either call her house insurance people and get them to sort the repairs out, they will then claim this back from your dads motor insurers. OR just contact your dads insurer direct and let them sort it out. Personally i'd ring up the house insurer as it would probably be quicker for them to sort this out. Obviously this will go against your dads claims history so he might lose some of his no claims bonus over it. Hope This Helps D.A

Just to add my 2 cents worth... I agree with JonCris on this one. Before i start, i'm not a legal expert in anyway, however, i have worked in insurance for a while so i'm speaking purely on my personal understanding on how the system works and not from a legal perspective. Also, almost all insurers will have this clause in their policy whereby if a total loss claim is made, then the full premium for the policy would need to be paid. Insurance is all based on risk. The consumer goes to the insurer and says " i want you to insure my car against XYZ for 12 months. If any of the above events happen, i want to be put back in the same financial position i am now. The insurer will weigh up the risk (drivers age, car, convictions, postcode etc) and will offer a premium based on that risk. The consumer then agrees those terms and enters into a 12 month contract. If event X was to happen after say 6 months, the insurer would pay out as agreed, however, the contract would still have 6 months left to run. The consumer would then have the option to either cancel the policy and pay up the rest of the years premium (to terminate the contract early) or use whatever payment the insurer gave them to purchase a new vehicle and put that vehicle on risk with the insurer for the remainder of the contract. I dont know of anyone that has disputed this in court and i cant possibly see how this could be unlawful if all insurers do it as surely someone would have picked up on this by now and taken action. Looks like this could be an interesting debate. D.A

If you pay by direct debit, then more often than not the insurance policy will be on an "automatic renewal" i.e you'll be sent a renewal quote in advance, but if you dont respond (of if its not logged on the insurers system correctly that you have responded) then the policy will automatically renew, you will be sent documentation and the 1st payment will be applied from your account. The reason the payments take so long to be refunded is simply because we have to have confirmation that the payment has cleared before we can refund it again. This can take anywhere up to 14 days for a bank to confirm (is all done electronically via BACS). As soon as the bank confirm the money has cleared, we will refund the payment to you. This isn't a [problem], or a con, its just a product of technology advancement. This never used to happen back in the days where people had to ring up to renew the policy, its only now that people have to ring up to NOT renew their policy. D.A

Had a check on our Intranet today for you and the oldest policy booklets we've got are from December 2007. Sorry i couldn't help. D.A

I'll have a look on our system tomorrow for you, see if i can find a pdf of the old policy booklets on there. D.A

Thats a lot of questions! lol! i'll try answer them as best i can. 1) yes, you pay your XS to your insurer and they in turn fix your car. They will then go about claiming your XS back from the other insurer (see point 2) From memory, an insurer has to give the third party insurer 6 months in which to respond to a letter regarding liablity. 3) No, i doubt they would do that, its more likely due to above. 4)No, as long as your insurers make a full recovery from the third party then your No Claims Bonus will remain intact. (Although may be reduced at renewal as claim is still ongoing but will be back-dated once liablity established) 5) Yes, I'd agree that NU have agreed to honour your NCB at renewal (see above). As to whether that just applies to them or whether you can use it elsewhere or not, you'd really have to speak to them to ask. It sounds like its just a goodwill gesture so may only apply if you renew with them as technically they "could" still not get a recovery from the other insurer. either way it cant hurt to ask. 6) No, i wouldn't bother taking it to that stage yet. NU have already dealt with the complaint and have offered you a gesture of goodwill by allowing your bonus at renewal, everything else is just a case of following guidelines. I cant see any reason why you wont get your XS back, its just a case of sitting tight for the moment and letting things sort themselves out. Calling NU occasionally and giving them a nudge to get a wriggle on wont hurt though! Hope this helps D.A

Usually when you get a refund for a policy, it will be paid back the same way it was paid to the insurer. I.e if you paid in full on a card it would go back on to the same card, if you pay monthly then it will go back into the account you paid the instalments from. From what you've said, it would appear that you pay for your home insurance from Northern Rock as part of your mortgage payment each month, so for them to credit it back to your mortgage doesn't sound unreasonable to me. I would assume that the Zurich one will be refunded back to whichever method you used to pay them so you should get at least one lump sum payment back. Hope this helps D.A

As Gyzmo said, the issue isn't the claim, its with a suspected modification to the vehicle which allegedly hasn't been disclosed to the insurer. All that's happened is that rather than void the policy, privilege have amended the policy to include the fact that the vehicle has been modified (lowered suspension) and then applied the relevant terms (the £450 compulsory XS) and then asked you for an additional premium to cover the change in the risk. All of which they are within their rights to do. They are also within their rights to delay the claim until the issue has been settled. It really comes down to whether the car is modified or not. If it is, then you don't really have much choice other than to accept the new terms of the policy, pay the additional premium and get the claim sorted out as you should have disclosed the modification to the insurer when you took the policy out. In the long run it sounds like you should get your XS back from the other parties insurer anyway. Hope this helps D.A

Normally we'd pick this up in CSD when you ring in to discuss the policy, we're all trained in how to detect fraud and to spot when something isn't quite right on a policy, simply by asking a few questions. When you take out a policy, you agree to something called the duty of disclosure. you'll find most insurers will ask you to be honest with any answers you give as any in-accuracy's may invalidate your cover. Again, echoing what mossy said, i'm not going to go into specifics, but suffice to say the entire industry is clamping down on fraud big time as its costing millions! DA

I believe Mossy is referring to "Fronted Risk". If you do a search through the forums you will see there are is a lot of information about this subject posted elsewhere. What he said is spot on though, you cant split your NCD so you would either have to start with zero or try to find a company that will cover all 3 cars with some sort of multiple discount. DA