Company automatically renewed insurance I did not want this so cancelled the Direct debit before policy started. They sent me a letter dated day policy started saying cancelling the Direct Debit does not mean I have cancelled the policy. I am past the 14 days as I have been on holiday and just got the letter. I have not paid anything for this policy. Can they make me pay or should I tell them to do one? Does not paying and cancelling not constitute a cancelling /refusal of contract?
I do need confirmation of my no claims from them so need to play nice
Advice opinions

Depends on the basis of the renewal I'd have thought – i.e. in the contract.

May be consumer rules about it too.

If you don't pay, they'll just cancel the contract.

yes but al how do I have a contract if I have not -paid?
I know they will cancel ot if I dont pay but will they still confirm no claims
I have not spoken to hem yet just want to know what my rights are first.

Think of it the other way round though – imagine a scenario where you didn't want to cancel but for some reason your direct debit failed to go through eg due to bank error and the insurance company just cancelled your policy it would be pretty poor if you then had no insurance when you thought you were covered. So I'd assume that simply cancelling the direct debit won't immediately cancel the policy

i thought the law changed so you could not just "roll over" into a new contract, you have to actively choose to renew

it has not failed they know I have cancelled it before the renewal date. Agree re above if in the middle or a missed payment.
Hope law has changed that is what I want to be able to cite something obsecure / legalistic at them if they ask for money.

i thought the law changed so you could not just "roll over" into a new contract, you have to actively choose to renew

Both my house and car insurance roll over automatically if I don't intervene. I always seem to get about 6 weeks notice though. If the quote is rubbish, I just cancel the Direct Debit.

i thought the law changed so you could not just "roll over" into a new contract, you have to actively choose to renew

Not in the case of my home insurance, I got a letter the other day telling me that unless I specifically called to cancel it, they'd just roll it over and continue raping my bank account for the privelege of being able to wriggle out of any claim I might make in the future.

wouldn't it still be classed as distance selling therefore giving you a cooling off period?

Whats the problem?

You've not paid anything, and they know you don't want cover with them.

Is there actually an issue here? Or are you just moaning about a system that provides for you not tobe inadventently uninsured and therefore up shizer creek if you have an accident?

They cannot or will not withhold no claims bonus from you if you ask for it. Have you actually asked?

It seems other than failing to read by clairvoyance, your mind, they have not yet done anything wrong, you have, and without discussing it with them, are moaning on a cycling forum about it.

All this can they/will they you are roleplaying with us, before even discussing it with them (apparently) strikes me as simply wasting everyones time.

Don't want to sound harsh, but you seem to have manned the lifeboats before you hit the iceberg. I think theres something missing from your appraisal of the situation, somehting they've clearly said to you, thats not made its way to your post, which means we cannot give you best advice.

Have they said they are trying to hold you to the policy? Are they demanding full payment. On what clause are they relying upon to enforce this, and what have they said to you to post this thread.

It'll be in the T&Cs of your previous years insurance that they'll auto-renew it unless you tell them not to. Then you get renewal paperwork, which basically reminds you "we'll keep this going, at this price, unless you tell us not to".

However, you probably didn't read those T&Cs or the wording of the reminder, and just cancelled your DD instead.

longer than usuual for the OP to be shot down on stw 😆

I think theres something missing from your appraisal of the situation, somehting they've clearly said to you, thats not made its way to your post, which means we cannot give you best advice.

no
Cant be arsed responding to the rest of your post but thanks for your input Dad 😉

You must provide continuous payment authority in order for the insurer to automatically renew your policy. So at some point in the process of originally purchasing the policy, you must have agreed that the policy could be automatically renewed (e.g. ticking a box or verbally consenting if you purchased by telephone).

The direct debit is just your method of payment, so cancelling it is not the same as cancelling the policy. If you have requested automatic renewal, the insurer actually has a duty to make sure your insurance is renewed, even if you cancel the direct debit, and they cannot assume you want to cancel the policy. For all they know, you could have been cancelling the direct debit because you wanted to set up a new one on a different bank account, or because you wanted to pay by credit card, etc.

If the 14 day cooling off period has expired, and you still want to cancel, you may have to pay some sort of cancellation fee (depends on the terms of your contract).

If you have outstanding direct debit instalments, the normal process will be to send you a series of letters asking you to pay up, and eventually you will probably end up in a debt chase process.

It sounds as if the insurer is doing things by the book.
I would recommend that you ring them up or write to them, explain that you were unable to cancel the policy because you were on holiday, and very calmly and politely ask if they will cancel the policy anyway, without applying any charges or chasing any outstanding payments. You may well find that they will be prepared to do this because of your "exceptional circumstances" because it makes sense to keep a future potential customer happy. Hopefully you'll also be able to get your NCD without any problem.

You can probably tell I'm spending too much time immersed in the insurance world at the moment…

Yes but that was the advice I was after ta
I will plead with them tomorrow

A couple of years ago I had an accident and the car was written off. Insurance paid out £6k for the car(after a bit of faffing around). 11 months later they took £1500 from my credit card, they had renewed the policy, without notifying me, against a car they they wrote off and charged me 4 times the previous years policy!

When I challenged it they said I was liable as a) I didn't tell them that I did not want to renew and b) I didn't inform them that the car was written off! They insisted it was necessary for me to tell them that they had written the car off.

I eventually got a refund but they still tried to charge me 2 weeks cover, which was how long it took for them to agree they were wrong.

i thought the law changed so you could not just "roll over" into a new contract, you have to actively choose to renew

Nope the company will send you a letter 21 days before renewal date which will say you need to call them if you don't want it. To cancel outside of 14 days usually has the cancellation fee (around £25) plus the time you've had on cover. They will have gone through all this on the sales call and if you had called the renewals team on that call too.

A couple of years ago I had an accident and the car was written off. Insurance paid out £6k for the car(after a bit of faffing around). 11 months later they took £1500 from my credit card, they had renewed the policy, without notifying me, against a car they they wrote off and charged me 4 times the previous years policy!

Pretty much the same thing happened to me last year, car written off in an accident but the insurance not cancelled… but, to be fair to the insurance company, the reasoning is that an insurance write off simply means that the repair cost exceeds the value of the car, there's nothing to stop you taking the insurance money and paying the excess to get the repair done. Unless you provide the insurance company with proof of an administrative write off as far as they're concerned the car is still on the road.

That said, I think it would be fairer to remove the automatic renewal in this case, and require verbal or written reconfirmation on the contract.

Pretty much the same thing happened to me last year, car written off in an accident but the insurance not cancelled… but, to be fair to the insurance company, the reasoning is that an insurance write off simply means that the repair cost exceeds the value of the car, there's nothing to stop you taking the insurance money and paying the excess to get the repair done. Unless you provide the insurance company with proof of an administrative write off as far as they're concerned the car is still on the road.

That said, I think it would be fairer to remove the automatic renewal in this case, and require verbal or written reconfirmation on the contract.

But usually in the case of the car being written off they keep the car. You have the oportunity to buy it back but once they pay out the car belongs to the company.

They do have some weird ways of going on
We needed to put our [newly passed her test] daughter on the ins

The incumbent insurers couldn't quote a price we could stomach so we went elsewhere – however, the policy still had around 6 weeks to run & they insisted that we paid £25 to cancel it with no refund on the premium

I suppose if the wife or me had crashed there may have been a bit of a debate over which company would pay up but there was no way I was paying them to cancel something like that

We needed to put our [newly passed her test] daughter on the ins
<snip>
the policy still had around 6 weeks to run

I'd have made her wait six weeks rather than shell out again 😉

This happened to me this year. They asked me for the pro-rata period that they had covered me for or prove that I did have cover with another insurer for that period. I told them no, REFUND- they did smartly. (Halifax was the insurer BTW).

but, to be fair to the insurance company, the reasoning is that an insurance write off simply means that the repair cost exceeds the value of the car, there's nothing to stop you taking the insurance money and paying the excess to get the repair done

We had this discussion, my argument was that they took legal ownership of the car once they had written it off> They argued that I could have repaired it but to do that, I would have had to buy it back from the insurance company!

Was HSBC by the way.

I'd have made her wait six weeks rather than shell out again

I'm not sure I could bear the 6 weeks winging that would have ensued