Cancellation of insurance without warning?

[Big Scouse]

Hi folks, My car is insured with AA insurance with my partner as a named driver, yesterday when she was driving home from work she was stopped by an ANPR equipped traffic car who stated that there was no valid insurance on the vehicle!....... this came as a hell of a shock to her and to me, we have both been driving over 25yrs with spotless licences and are so straight its is painful, we have always been paranoid about keeping things legal because I have to pass through a permanant police check point both going into work and out again.

 

It turns out that we had inadvertently and unintentionally missed a payment, and whilst we understand that it is our responsibility to ensure sufficient funds it was a complete oversight on our parts because for the last two months we have not been paying particular attention due to running backwards and forwards to her dying fathers bedside pratically everyday, so its been a quick check of the balance at the ATM and nothing more.

 

The AA say that they sent us a notice of intended cancellation which I swear we have not recieved, nor did we recieve any notification from them regarding this missed payment otherwise we would have sorted it there and then, in fact we have not even recieved the policy documents, everything having been done online and a cover note downloaded to tax the car. There have been some problems with my postcode with my local council using a different one from the one we were told when we bought the house, but we seem to recieve other mail without too many problems, although we do recieve mail for people who dont live here as well. The AA also have my email address and mobile phone no but neither of these were used to contact me re the missed payment. The notice of intended cancellation was NOT sent to me via recorded delivery but was merely a computer generated letter.

 

The upshot of all this is that I had to arrange cover over the phone yesterday to prevent the police confiscating the car, they now want £360 from us to pay off the cancelled insurance!, plus they have put up my quote from £600 to £900 because my partner has been issued with a summons for driving with no insurance!........... this is BEFORE she has been convicted of any offence, which in my opinion is very dubious to say the least? We do intend to appeal the case, even the Police officer was very sympathetic and said that he believed it was a genuine error and looking at our driving records pointed us in the direction of appeal.

 

Can anyone give us any guidance on where to go from here?......... I am very aggrieved with AA insurance services to say the least and am writing a letter of complaint to their customer complaints dept for what that will be worth.

[raydetinu]

Cant see any way out from this, except to ask AA to reconsider. Ultimately its your fault.

Also your bank should have informed you of denied DD/low funds.

[ihateyes]

for 1 missed payment it seems harsh....

and you are re-insuring with them.... madness

id be away somewhere else after that type of treatment