Rant about charges for updates to car insurance policy

273K

I have on several occasions over the past several years had to make changes to car insurance policies, due to changing address or changing car. Every time I have to do this it costs me around £50-100! The premium itself always goes up by somewhere between £25-75, this is sort of understandable, if a little suspicious. Whenever I come to renew I can always find a policy that costs roughly the same as the previous year and have been able to for years now. Inflation is not at 10%  or whatever it would need to be for a price increase of £25 on a £500 policy in 6 months! An increase due to change of car  I can accept (usually newer/more expensive model), but I find it hard to believe I’m consistently choosing more risky areas to live in. Twice I’ve moved less than ½ a mile from my previous address, nothing else has changed, same car, same drivers, no claims or convictions. Price still went up. When I queried why it's gone up they just say they're putting it into the "system" and that's what came out. What gives?

But what really gets me is the “admin charge”. Usually around £25, and all insurers I’ve dealt with seem to apply it for making any changes to a policy. So even if you get the hump and cancel they charge you. Thing is to make the change involves a 5-min phone call to update the address on the computer and take card payment and I receive the updated policy docs via email before I’m even off the phone! For £25. How much are they paying these call centre workers? What admin is involved here? They’re not even sending out letters or using underwriters. Again when I queried this charge they said they have to pass on the cost of making the change. What cost?! It must be pence! This in no way reflects the “cost of doing business” and, if you ask me, is a devious ruse.

Every time this happens I fume about it for a few days then the anger subsides until the next time I get stung. I really want to do something/complain about this, get them to justify their charges, contact the ombudsman or something. Seems to me they’re overcharging. Or am I wrong about this?

AMc

I used to work for a company that monitored website availability.  We routinely used to use the figures from Gartner (?) that it cost a minimum of $1 to deal with a customer enquiry online, when you did that on the phone the cost rose to $10.  Our USP was our service helped to keep self service working so the overall cost of customer management was reduced.
I'm not saying that the charges are justified at that level but there is a cost to taking a phone call.

273K

Oh yeah, I'm not denying there's any cost involved, just that, even allowing for a margin, charging £25 for what amounts to a 5 min phone call is taking the proverbial.

Treboeth

Any admin charges should be listed on your policy t&C's.
If you know there's a strong possibility you will need to make changes to the policy it may be better to find a company that allows changes FOC rather than finding the lowest price at renewal time.

un1eash

6 months into my policy and changed from a 520d to a 1.2 Qashqai, was expecting some kind of fee but instead got an £80 refund.

IronGiant

No, you got a £105 refund, from which they deducted £25 for registering the change of vehicle

273K

I have yet to find a mainstream company which doesn't apply these charges, regardless of cost. Also it's not unreasonable that you may need to change mid-way through, for a number of legitimate and unpredictable reasons and insurers shouldn't fleece/punish you for it, just because they can.

273K

Yeh, change of car affecting premium is understandable. But did they charge you admin fee?

gg13533

Direct Line don't charge me when I notify them that I am fitting/removing winter wheels but they did charge £47.50 when my dad cancelled his policy when he stopped driving

273K

Ah, seems Direct line don't charge fees. I mainly use price comp sites so tend to miss them, though they always used to come out really expensive when I did get quotes from them.

Just found this Beat huge insurance admin fees for simple changes

.. the Financial Conduct Authority says they have to be "reasonable" and must reflect the true cost of administration. If this isn't the case you can ask the insurer for the fee to be waived. If it refuses, complain to the company directly and then after eight weeks you can escalate the problem to the free Financial Ombudsman.

Might try this approach with my insurer (esure).