Diamond car insurance not updated policy, unknowingly driving without insurance for 4 months!

[elelephant]

Hi everyone,

 

I am posting here for some advice.

 

I have insured my car with Diamond for over a year.

In August, I bought a new car and contacted Diamond to update my policy.

The staff member I spoke to advised me that he had temporarily changed my then current policy (which was coming to an end) to my new car, and started a new policy which he said would insure my new car from September and reassured me that I would not have to do anything else.

I paid £100 upfront for this and have been paying £60 monthly since.

 

Last week, I received a letter in the post from the MID stating that my car was not registered as insured.

Puzzled, I phoned Diamond and explained the situation,

it turns out that the new policy was still registered for my old car,

and that my new car had in fact been uninsured the whole time!

 

I was very shocked and surprised and expressed this to the salesperson,

who told me it would be a £20 admin fee to change the policy over to my new car!

Which it was supposed to be changed to all along!

I absolutely refused to pay this, and he did then remove the charge.

 

Where do I stand with this?

Am I liable to be reimbursed for any of the money that I paid towards insurance for a car which had been scrapped in August?

Or does the duty lie with me to further check the documents?

 

I specifically remember the salesperson reassuring me that I didn't need to do anything extra for my policy.

I had received one email on 19th August stating that my policy had been updated to my new car,

so hadn't looked any further,

although the salesperson from Diamond (when I spoke to them yesterday) said there was no record of my call to them on that day.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

El

[BankFodder]

Clearly the insurer has acted very negligently here. I think the big question for you is whether you are going to be put to any problems as a result of this. For instance, are you likely to be prosecuted for no insurance?

 

On the basis that you have been paying the correct premiums for the insurance on your new car – then I don't think that there is anything to claim back. However, I think you need to make sure that there is no suggestion anywhere on any database that you have had an uninsured vehicle and that you have been driving it uninsured.

 

If there is some suggestion that there may be trouble because of apparently driving an insured then this needs to be dealt with.

[unclebulgaria67]

What should have happened is that the customer service agent you spoke to should have undertaken two separate admin tasks.

 

1) update the current policy year with the change of car.

2) update the policy with the change of car from the renewal date, advising you of the revised renewal premium. Unfortunately Insurances go into renewal mode about 5 weeks ahead of the renewal date and the renewal on your old car had already been produced. When they updated the current policy year, it would not have updated the renewal that had already been produced. Hence why two seperate tasks are required.

 

Insurers are allowed to backdate Insurance in these situations where they have made a mistake, to correct their error. But they must get a manager to authorise this and sometimes IT have to enable it depending on the system they use. Most Insurers say they can never backdate, but that is not true. They can correct errors.

 

Suggest a complaint is made with some force and insist this is corrected.

[sgtbush]

I would be complaining to the CEO or managing director.

If they insist in charging you an admin fee, which they shouldn't as its their mistake then I would be tempted to claim back the payments under the direct debit guarantee...

However that may open a bigger can of worms!!!