Dial Direct Cancellation charge

[smartdogg]

Hi all, this is my first post and I hope someone can offer me some help here.

 

I have just received a letter from my car insurers requesting that I return my insurance certificate. On further investigation I have discovered that due to my recent current account transfer from Woolwich to Barclays, the Spetember payment was not paid by my bank. This was a payment that had previously been taken from my debit card each month and the bank had not informed my insurers of the new details.

 

On phoning my insurers, Dial Direct, they advised that my policy has been cancelled due to non payment and that they had written to me advising of the cancellation, but were uninterested in hearing that I did not receive any letters from them until the request of return of the docs.

 

They have demanded £167 cancellation charges, for a policy that ends in April. Up until now I have been paying £32 a month.

 

I checked online for other quotes and found that Dial Direct are quoting £153 a year for the same cover, yet they quoted me in excess of £360 per annum. So far this year, my total payments have exceeded their online quote.

 

Who can I contact in relation to this, as I feel that they have been ripping me off for some time?

[Simon7685]

Hi

 

I am not sure of who you would contact. However you do seem to have a similar situation to mine with Its4me. I have refused to pay them any cancellation charges whatsoever as my cancellation was brought about by them refusing a debit card payment, then wanting to charge me for the privelage. It's in a bit more detail on my thread, if you want to take a look.

 

I am holding firm over not paying and am sure I have a good solid case. In your case I would be surprised if you don't have a decent case too. It may be worth checking your policy docs and seeing what it says about missed payments. I wouldn't of thought they could cancel your policy under the circumstances of a missed payment.

 

Do not pay them until you have checked it out!

 

Simon:)

[Darkangelsdelite]

Lets address the issues here one at a time.

In regards to the missed payments, i'm affraid the onus is on you to check the money leaves you account and not the insurer to chase you for missing payments. They will probably have a record on their system of all the letters they have sent and the dates you received them. Unfortunatly you not receiving them wont hold water as you would have still had bank statements etc to show the money hadn't been taken.

Just to point out to simon, yes they can cancel the policy for non-payment as you are in breach of your terms and conditions.

So in regards to the outstanding balance, you may just have to pay up although i do agree with your point on the cancelation charge as this should be waved due to them invoking cancelation.

 

I'm not entirely sure i understand your second point. At the time you took the policy out, you were happy with the premium they quoted you. Insurance rates change all the time so its hardly supprising that the quote you got 6 months ago is different today, plus they may also have some kind of promotion going where they're tying to increase their customer base so offering low premiums which will just go back to normal next year at renewal. Its just a fact of life, all insurance works the same and there really isn't anything you can do about it to be fair.

Its a bit like buying a new car for £10k then in 6 months time seeing that the dealer is offering the same car for £8k, its just life.

 

 

Hope this helps

 

 

DA

[smartdogg]

Thank you for your replies.

 

The reason I was not aware that the payment had not been taken from my bank is because I have recently had my account transferred from Woolwich to Barclays. I don't receive statements, but use the online banking, which is far from satisfactory on the Barclays site compared to the old Woolwich online banking site.

 

Barclays had kindly informed all my other creditors of my new account details to ensure monthly bills were paid on time. However, I hadn't realised, or been informed by Barclays that monthly debits from my debit card would not be included in the information transfer. I was therefore unaware that anything was amiss. Having not heard from Dial Direct either, I was none the wiser.

 

My first knowledge of any issue was when Dial Direct requested the return of my Certificate. In the past they had contacted me by phone to advise that a payment was late and I had no reason to believe that if the same were to occur at any time in the future that they wouldn't contact me in the same way.

 

When my premium was announced in April I was satisfied in the fact that it had not risen substantially from the previous year's, however I put my trust in them to offer me the best deal available. It is only now when I compare prices of all the providers, that most quotes are in the same ball park, in that they are all pretty much 50% of what I have been paying for the last 5 months with Dial Direct. I think it scandalous that they have not passed on the benfits of reduced premiums to one of their long standing Customers. Insurance premiums have been rising steadily, so I don't see why they should suddenly halve unless they have misquoted me in the past and continued to do so ever since.

[c00kiemonster]

I had a similiar situation to yours smartdogg with dial direct.

 

I too changed banks, but I opted to chnge all DD's and SO's myself. All chnges worked except for the dial direct one who had over 3 weeks notice of the changes.

Anyway they ignored my changes to payment details and continued to set up a new DD with my old bank, and attempted to take 4 payments from an empty current account in the space of 10 days.

This was all before my payment was due from my new account.

 

First I knew of this, I got a letter from old bank saying my account was over £100 od, and I didnt have any arrangements in place for an od.

Also that morning a notice of cancellation from Dial Direct about the failed DD payments meaning they had no choice but to cancel my insurance from the date of this letter.

By the time I received this it meant I had been driving illegally on britains roads with no insurance for 3 days:evil: Of which I had no knowledge of at the time.

 

I got the cancellation charge too which they soon dropped when I was able to prove how they had f***** up.

 

I hope you got your problem sorted smartdogg, I did eventually but it did cause me some stress tho sorting it out as dial direct are some stubborn gits when they want to be, I was definitely made to feel like the little small person taking on the big corporation when sorting this.

 

Because of this I also got a 1 months late payment mark on my credit file from my bank, not to bad I know, but a bad mark all the same!

 

cm

 

 

[djgordyp]

I had a similar problem with my insurance in 06. I missed a payment but my insurance wasn't cancelled. This is probably due to the fact that I was making the payments to a company called premium credit. My insurance broker did write to me however, adviseing that it would be cancelled and I was able to make the payment before the end of the month,

[cazzaswfc]

I had a similiar situation to yours smartdogg with dial direct.

 

 

Anyway they ignored my changes to payment details and continued to set up a new DD with my old bank, and attempted to take 4 payments from an empty current account in the space of 10 days.

This was all before my payment was due from my new account.

 

 

 

You state you got this sorted eventually? Did they pay your bank charges? ( if you got any)

 

with a direct debit agreement, they must inform you in writing giving 10 wkg days notice ( under the auddis agreement)

 

i.e 1st payment rejects, they cannot go in for it a few days later, they MUST inform you in writing of the new dd date.

 

If an insurance co has tried to take 4 payments within 10 days they ARE breaking the above agreement.

[c00kiemonster]

You state you got this sorted eventually? Did they pay your bank charges? ( if you got any)

 

with a direct debit agreement, they must inform you in writing giving 10 wkg days notice ( under the auddis agreement)

 

i.e 1st payment rejects, they cannot go in for it a few days later, they MUST inform you in writing of the new dd date.

 

If an insurance co has tried to take 4 payments within 10 days they ARE breaking the above agreement. [/left]

 

Yes eventually I did. My bank gave me 6 weeks lee way, to enable me to reclaim the money, before they would add further charges.

In my letter to Dial Direct I requested i had the money at the latest 2 weeks before this deadline with the bank, giving them a whole 4 weeks. This was not adhered to by them and i was forced to stump up the full amount to the bank and wait for the repayment from Dial Direct.

Which followed approx another 4 weeks later.

 

After changing my details over to the new bank, i never received written confirmation of the changes, mail was always slow from them and things slip the mind to follow up.

 

I also never received any written communication from them regarding the failed DD's. First time I knew about this, was the day i got the letter from the bank.

 

The 4 charges to my old bank, were firstly for 2 payments of car insurance, something to do with payment date changes, never got to the bottom of that one.

Third charge was retry on the first charge and the fourth was a £25 for failing 2 DD payments.

 

Sorry if this is hijacking, I was just answering some questions raised by cazzaswfc:D

 

cm