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Automatic Renewal Swift.Com


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Trying to find out information for my son. He had car insurance with Swift.Com this ran out October 07. It seems that everything is done online and they sent renewal by email end Sept 07. However he did not have email at that time and still does not. They also automatically renew the policy. This should be abolished. He put a SORN notice on the car 1st November and waited for the scrap people to pick it up which was Jan 08. (They took a lot of chasing). First contact he had with Swift was by letter 17 Jan 08 saying they had been unable to collect payment using credit card. He ignored it because he thought well I did not insure the car so what are you doing trying to collect my money. Next letter 3 March 08 saying pay within 7 days or may have to cancel policy. He replied to this saying he had not renewed the insurance so there was nothing to cancel. Next letter 3 June saying pay £196.26 within 7 days or may have to cancel policy. He ignored this one. Next letter 17 September giving notification of Debt Recovery for £137.27 but they put a paragraph in the letter saying if vehicle scrapped, had SORN or sold etc then call so they can advise what proof is needed to potentially re-assess the balance. He wrote and said he had SORN declaration from 1 Nov 07. They wrote and said provide documentation to prove you did not require this car insurance from 24 Oct 07 to enable us to back date this cancellation further. They also said contact before 30 Sept to either clear the balance or provide the documentation they require. He sent the SORN notification by next day delivery so we know it arrived. Yesterday he had a letter from Regal Credit demanding payment. What does he do. Please help sorry if it is long winded

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When your son set-up the policy online there will have been a refernce to their terms and conditions, one of which will be the automatic renewal unless your son tells them the renewal was not required.

 

So, as far as Swift were aware your son was quite happy to let the renewal go through (because he hadn't told them otherwise, and he was aware from the website that it would automatically renew (yes you can state now that your son wasn't aware of this but he will have ticked the box to say he read,understood and accepted their terms of business, so you can't really claim that)), he was also happy to ignore reminders without bothering to reply to them to inform them that the insurance was no longer required.

 

What he needs to do now is to write some fairly contrite letters explaining why he didn't respond earlier and hope that the insurers accept this and write-off the debt.

 

In the eyes of the law the duty was on your son to inform them that insurance was no longer required, he failed to do this so they continued to provided insurance. If they insist on payment you will have to pay or risk going to Court and getting a CCJ

 

Mossy

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The first thing to do is to contact the Debt Collection Agency and tell them that you dispute the debt, and that you are in correspondence with the insurer about the matter. This at least should freeze the account until the matter can be resolved.

 

Now Oct 24th (when the policy lapsed) and 1st Nov (when the car was declared SORN) is only a week apart. First thing to do is to check if there is any way that you can without doubt prove that the car was off the road and unused at this time. If there was then great use it.

 

If there is not then you will want to write that letter Mossy was talking about. Make it clear that you didn't understand that the policy would be automatically renewed, and then say that you did not use the car, and at most the time between the insurqnce expiring and the SORN declaration was 1 week. State again that nobody used the car during this time.

 

They will probably accept that as a reason, but if they don't accept it and are really refusing to budge then you could take them up on their offer to cancel the policy as at 1st Nov (which they offered when they asked you to provide proof so that they could backdate it to 24th October). This would be within the 14 day time limit you are allowed to cancel, so you would only be liable for 8 days of cover plus an admin fee for cancellation (which will be £10 if you are lucky, but will prob be £25ish). If they offer you a 'get out' sum of something like £30, then it might be better to accept this than fight it. Just make sure that if they recorded a default against your credit file for this that they get it removed.

 

Personally if they had put a default against my name, and agreed to remove that and draw a line under the whole thing for £30 I would take it. It might seem a bitter pill, but in the long run I don't think it's worth the hassle to turn such an offer down. Whatever you do don't get angry or on a 'high horse' about this. I'm not saying you are in the wrong here, but I am saying that it will hurt your cause. Be polite to them, appeal to their sense of fairness (after all the SORN was declared just 8 days after the insurance expired) and you will hopefully get a favourable result.

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