Hastings Direct Lack of Transparency

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I took out car insurance with this provider online using MoneySupermarket. Com.  When I received my policy a few minutes later, I discovered a couple of errors.  Hastings direct had started my insurance a day earlier than I’d indicated on my online form.  They had also reduced the value of my car.
I called to advise them of the errors.  I was told this could not be corrected without my policy being cancelled and re-quoted and I also need to take into account that the premium I originally paid may also increase when re-quoted.  I informed HastingsDirect that I was not willing to pay a higher premium than that originally taken out and already paid in full. True to their word, they re-quoted my policy at a slightly higher amount than what I originally paid. When I refused to pay the difference in price,  I was immediately told that if I cancel the policy, which incidentally is not even 24hrs old, I  will be penalised £20 retainer fee! Apparently, this was noted on the website when I took out the policy, but HastingsDirect cannot even send me evidence to support this claim involving the £20 policy.   I will be referring my complaint to the financial ombudsman as HastingsDirect are misleading consumers.
 

[BankFodder]

Yes you certainly should begin a formal complaint and indicate that you want to go to the ombudsman.

If you wanted to do something far more powerful then you could sue them for unfair treatment in breach of the regulations contained in ICOBS

[unclebulgaria67]

Make a complaint to Money supermarket (MS), to see if they can resolve, as they were acting as agent if you went via them. If you went via MS, perhaps there was error created through their site ?

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3 hours ago, unclebulgaria67 said:

Make a complaint to Money supermarket (MS), to see if they can resolve, as they were acting as agent if you went via them. If you went via MS, perhaps there was error created through their site ?

Thank you  I will

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5 hours ago, BankFodder said:

Yes you certainly should begin a formal complaint and indicate that you want to go to the ombudsman.

If you wanted to do something far more powerful then you could sue them for unfair treatment in breach of the regulations contained in ICOBS

Thank you 

[CraigMcK]

Regarding the car value.  if you say your car if worth £10k you almost certainly would not get that figure if it was written off. It is merely a guide, so if it was a similar number I would not bother too much. Also you can’t overestimate the car value, it must be market related. They will use estimators like Parker’s guide to give you a value.

Are you absolutely sure you put the correct date in money supermarket? It would have been transferred across automatically, so no human intervention to type in the wrong date

 

On that basis is it really worth the hassle for a days insurance. 

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30 minutes ago, CraigMcK said:

Regarding the car value.  if you say your car if worth £10k you almost certainly would not get that figure if it was written off. It is merely a guide, so if it was a similar number I would not bother too much. Also you can’t overestimate the car value, it must be market related. They will use estimators like Parker’s guide to give you a value.

Are you absolutely sure you put the correct date in money supermarket? It would have been transferred across automatically, so no human intervention to type in the wrong date

 

On that basis is it really worth the hassle for a days insurance. 

Thank you for your comments. I duplicated my info on other comparison sites to obtain the best quote.  I've since checked to ensure I didn't make the mistake and the details are correct on all other sites but Hastings.   I totally agree with your point on the car value aspect too.  However, this insuror devalued the car by £1500 less than all the other providers.   All said, the principle of my argument here is that, I was penalised for bringing the anomaly to HastingsDirect's attention in less than 24hrs, even though I was following their own procedural rules. I have held car insurance for many years and it's the first time in my experience that an insurance company or insurance broker has had the administrative incapability to make such a small correction, without needing to first cancel the original policy and additionally increase the original premium due to the start date being incorrect.  Equally, they also denied me my statutory 14 days cooling off period by applying a charge for cancellation.  The product was not even due to be effected until 3 days later.