Its on my mind so gotta let you guys know.

My other half has her insurance through Diamond. A couple of weeks ago we got the renewal form through, scanned it, looked at price, date, etc etc and thought nothing of it. Insurance runs out this Friday and we are away for nearly 4 weeks so thought we would re-new when we get back and not before.
This morning get a letter from Diamond saying thanks for re-newing we have taken £320 off the original CC details you gave us last year, WHAT??? ..rang them and they said if you read the small print it says if you DONT want us to automatically re-new ring us, if you dont we will take the money again.
The policy was taken out over the phone originally and this was not disclosed, the policy document for signing did not have a tick box for auto re-new or not, there was no direct debit mandate for me to sign. There is a small note in the bottom section where you sign to say you are who you say you are, saying ''your policy will be automatically re-newed till further notice. Cheeky basxtards.
There is then a note in the very small print saying this only applies to people who have payed on credit card.........In other words if they have your CC details they use it like a license to print money, but if you payed by cheque then tuff your insurance runs out and your on your own .....

Now this may be standard policy but its bloody wrong IMHO.

They were also about as much use as tits on a bull with regards to their customer services techniques..''why do you wanna talk to a manager, they wont say nothing diffrerent'' ''The form is legally binding and says this so tuff'' ...... dar de dar.

Yup, same nearly happened to us with them. Caught it just in time as we got a quote over £100 less elsewhere. :hjtwofing :D

Several insurance companies I know do this. So do the AA and RAC for their memberships. Thing is because its a CC normal direct debit rules dont apply, they can just include some text along the lines of "unless we are notified otherwise your credit card will be debited at renewal". There is nothing to cancel with the CC issuer either so its much harder to cancel. If I see these words or simillar, I just pay by cheque to avoid this happening.

This is known as a "continuous payment authority" and IMHO should be made illegal. As has been mentioned, you cant just treat them like a DD. You get the same sort of probs with ISP's.......

barstewards!


Mark

I could just imagine someone like my old mum being caught our big time by this and having two insurances running at the same time .... You wouldnt know it had happened till your next credit card bill, and thats if you take any notice of that too .....

Similar thing happened to me mate. They took the money and said there was nothing I could do about it which incensed me even more. The disclosure was in the small print blah blah blah.

Immediately drafted a letter and back dated it to a few days after I received my renewal notice confirming I was not authorising the debit for the coming year and as such my card details should be removed from their records. Passed the details to my card issuer who did the rest when I queried the charge on the statement. Result.....one full refund!

I agree this method of payment should be frowned upon though. It will obviously be open to abuse.

Rob

Admiral do the same. They say "Renewing is easy. To avoid any gap in cover and further paperwork for you we will debit your credit card. Please let us know immediately if you don't want to take advantage of this option."

The renewal confirmation was sent out about 14 days before the end of the policy - a bit useless if you're away on a 3 week cruise!

When I took out the policy it was for ONE YEAR, not all freakin' eternity.

On the other hand!

If you forgot to renew and had an accident or your car was stolen whilst you were away :eek:

You would have been posting a different song!.

Some insurers do it, some dont. The finance option wasnt created just for car insurance, but for everything from investments to health insurance.

Be objective and open minded, you just copped the wrong side this time round.