Sons insurance cancelled because we changed the address!

I just renewed my sons policy about 3 weeks ago. This was a renewal and the online process didn’t require us to enter addresses etc - but when I got the policy documents I realised they had the address wrong - a house share Josh was at until recently. SO - I had to return some documents and included an update on the address. My address is WAY safer than the area he was in and is only 3 miles away (in the same town). The insurance company have cancelled the policy for “unacceptable change of address”. FFS!

I’ve noticed that insurance companies are sending 7 day notices for documents like proof of no claims bonus etc. - they seem very keen to cancel policies these days (I think because they can charge lucrative cancellation fees). I think that is what is going on here. So now I have to waste my f’ing time, probably pay more money, lose half the premium I’ve already paid and so on. What a pain in the arse! I’m gonna ring them today to see if I can sort it, but otherwise I will complain to the financial ombudsman.

You get a cooling off period which is 7 days by law. You are within your right to cancel with no fees within that time.

I had something similar recently.

For some reason my employment was stated on my policy as health food worker, whatever that is, I rang them up and attempted to change my employment to what it was at the time, legal, and they refused my insurance, telling me they would have to cancel it because the company they used wouldn’t insure me as a legal worker (this was the broker).

So I found out who my underwriter was, went online and attempted to insure myself with them, under an assumed name, as a legal worker.

No problem at all. Insured me without any issue, furthermore, the price when I changed only the employment detail, did not change, it was the same for both jobs.

So I went back to my broker and explained all of this, that it clearly was not true that the underwriter would not insure me in that employment.

Very quickly my broker “attempted” to get me insurance and blamed the error on a computer glitch, the details were then changed without cost to me, due to the fact that I have never said I was a health food worker, and clearly didn’t need to as I gained no advantage from doing so.

You probably best to ring them and talk to a human being.

Yeah I tried requoting through a comparison site and the same broker shows different underwriters - so no joy there.

I called the broker and they supposedly checked the underwriter again and came back with the same answer. I’m insuring two other motorbikes and two cars here, but as far as a 125 is concerned this underwriter thinks my postcode is in Bengahzi.

I told the broker I would not accept any deduction of cancellation fees. They seemed unmoved. It’s a freakin ripoff. I’ll insure it elsewhere - it’s just such a pain in the butt.

Check they were amending all addresses on the policy. If they change the lived at address but not the vehicle kept at address insurers may not like it.

Yeah it’s for real. I contacted the underwriter direct. They are a small underwriter (KGM Motors) and they cover very few postcodes within my area - so RM16 3xx IS covered but RM16 6xx isn’t. Crazy. The underwriter is at least going to speak to the broker to waive the cancellation fee after accepting my point that the cancellation seems unfair considering how small an area they cover. More often than not, it isn’t possible to change address with this firm - and that seems to be overly restrictive to me.

I had problems getting Art junior insured

He’s away at Uni and the insurance companies didn’t like the fact that his Driving Licence and V5 are for our home address and his residence is at another address 100+ miles apart, they charged us an extra £20 for holding the additional details on file.

You don’t live in a fairly new house do you? I have heard of cases in the past that when new houses are built and given a new postcode some insurers will not cover it until they can get data to work out the loss ratio. Problem is without giving cover they will never get data.

No T Cat it’s just they don’t cover certain postcodes.

I had a Kawasaki ER5 (slow boring bike) insured with MCE, when I rang up to have the policy changed to a Fazer 600, I was told the underwriters refused to insure that bike!