Someone taken car insurance out in my name/address?

[delinquentwoody]

I received a strange letter in the post today.

A car insurance renewal quote from the AA, addressed to me, for a car I don't have (and have never had), with a named driver on the quote whose name I do not know.

There is no car registration number given, only the make and specific model.

The letter said about switching to the AA to receive the quoted price.

 

This instantly raised alarm bells that someone, somewhere, has taken out a car insurance policy using my name and address.

I immediately rung the AA and voiced my suspicions, and the call handler said they would pass this through to their fraud department to investigate.

 

However I don't feel I've resolved this, as the policy someone has taken out isn't with the AA - it's with someone else - AA were just saying about switching to them.

 

How can I go about finding out who this policy is with, and are there any authorities I should report this to? I'm a bit at a loss as to what to do here!

[dx100uk]

I had this at the backside of last year.

was a Mr TOMTOROI named at your address was it?

 

turned out they latterly too up the offer and signed up with the AA and we got all the papers in the post with his name at our address.

time dragged on past xmas.

 

on 2nd of the new year I sent a formal complaint and CC'd the FOS

 

2 weeks later I got £100 out of the AA for not acting sooner.

[unclebulgaria67]

What this could be is someone living in your area, wanted to get an online quote, without giving their true name and address. This is so they get an idea of the premium, without the Insurers holding onto their details.

 

There are also market research companies and Insurers rating analysts that apply for quotes, based on made up names/addresses. An Insurance company I worked would receive dozens of returned post on a daily basis, where we found that quotes had been obtained using false details. On the envelopes it would be noted, that Mr G Raffe or Mr M Mouse has never lived at the address.

[delinquentwoody]

Thanks for your responses.

 

To give a little more detail, the quote has a named driver of a Mrs L Roberts who I do not know, and the car due to be renewed is a Mazda 6 TS TD 143 which I do not own and have never heard of. Next to registration number it says "Unknown". They have put on a £450 voluntary excess.

 

I'm mostly concerned as I saw something on Watchdog about this a few weeks back, it's a new [problem] done on several thousand people every year, whereby someone unwittingly buys car insurance through an unknowingly crooked broker, who buys them cover online giving a random strangers address and putting them as the named driver. They are then given genuine looking documents minus the real address - but when the customer comes to claim that's when they hit problems. 

 

The programme highlighted cases also where payments to the insurer weren't made properly and so the debt collectors went knocking on the home of the randomly chosen address.

 

I'm strongly suspecting this is what's happened to me - and am concerned that I may get a knock on the door at any point in the future.

 

I've subscribed to a credit file service but can't see anything untoward on there - but I was wondering if there is any other action I can take.

 

 

[unclebulgaria67]

Don't worry about this.

 

Someone in your postcode area has looked into buying a Mazda and has entered details into an internet quote site, to see how much it would be. They would have been asked for an address and might have made an error or noted your address, as they wanted to avoid junk mail.

[ericsbrother]

I think there may be a scenario that explains this quite well that isnt nefarious and it is to do with insurance brokers.

If a broker is training new staff they input a load of stuff that doesnt go "live" and rather than use the name "mickey mouse" they put a random name/address in the fields. This all gets deleted when the trainee has a go at a live quotation EXCEPT when they forget to save the info in the correct place and all of this gets put in to the autofill part of the first quote they give becasue the training file is called up and noone noticed.

 

some poor sod will be comapling to AA or the broker in about a week that they havent got their quote