Diamond

[me_n_my_kids]

I made a big mistake when insuring my new car. i took quotes from 2 companies, diamond and tesco, but i actually took the insurance from both as a blip. anyway while i was in hospital having a baby someone else was seeing to paperwork for me, didnt notice what i had done, and carried on with direct debits for both. i came home, realised, cancelled the one with diamond, but now have a letter from a DCA demanding payment of around £150 on behalf of diamond. im guessing lots of fees? is this covered by a cca?

 

thanks for any advice you can give me:)

[mooreda]

you need to ring diamond and explain that you had "dual insurance" therefore they should reimburse your money - if not complain and go to the ombudsman if necessary.

[buzby]

Hang on - were you paying up both policies? The problem is you cannot simply stop paying the insurance as they have to average out the total cost throughout the year and you pay it in (say) 12 equal installments.

 

This should not be confused with thinking that your policy is costing you £25 per month (or whatever). You needed to advise whichever company you are leaving that due to an error, you actually have duplicate cover on the same vehicle - this in itself is not illegal, but if there was a claim, each company would only meet 50% of the cost of the repairs.

 

The company would then cancel your policy with effect from the date of your request, calculate the cost of providing short-term insurance (always more expensive than an annual policy), or hit you with a policy cancellation charge, then take off the payments already made, and require you to pay the balance outstanding.

 

It looks as though they've probably done this, but because you've not paid up the balance of your policy, they're justifiably getting heavy.

 

You might want to ask for an explanation of what is supposedly owed, but the scenario I outlined is the most likely.

[Darkangelsdelite]

Dual insurance is quite straight forward to deal with.

 

Firstly you need to decide which company you wish to stay with (presume from your post its tesco) You then need to call the other insurer and advise them you set the policy up in error, they will almost certainly ask you to return your certificate of motor insurance along with a letter with proof of the other companies policy (usually a schedule will do).

 

As long as you can prove you have had alternate cover in place they will normally cancel the policy back to inception and give a full refund without any problems.

 

Just by the by, the reason you've had the letter from the DCA is because you just canceled the Direct debit, which doesn't actually cancel the policy, it just stops the payments and puts the policy into arrears until the insurer finally cancels it and chases you for payments for time on risk. You should have had other letters from diamond advising you that you've canceled the direct debit and asking you to call in to resolve the situation. So in answer to your second question, if diamond have done everything reasonably expected to contact you and make you aware of the debt and you just haven't contacted them, then there isn't a lot you can do. However, as this is a dual insurance case, it shouldn't be an issue, was more for info purposes.