What would you do if you had two years ago taken insurance through a broker, set up a D/D with the bank and had cert sent out. Three months later no D/D collection so broker notified and again after six months, reply dont worry they are slow. 12mths pass we change insurance company through the same broker, we hear no more. Now we are two years on the ins company send us a letter saying through their audit they have identified their error, we owe £270. So a letter went to them saying your error your problem we told the broker. They replied offering a discount of 20% if we pay within 28 days. We did not claim on any policy but if we had would they have paid up or told us your not insured as payments were not collected. The payment collection was farmed out to India. What are your views please, anyone with any legal knowledge how we stand.
Insurance late collection
- Thread starter Reedster
- Start date
As long as you had the certificate in your possession I'm pretty certain that you would have been insured, the payment collection is a side-issue.
Looking at it from a moral and not legal standpoint, if it was me I would pay it, a deal is a deal after all in spite of their incompetence.
Looking at it from a moral and not legal standpoint, if it was me I would pay it, a deal is a deal after all in spite of their incompetence.
A
Anonymous
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Pay it. If you'd claimed, or been stopped by the police you would've expected it to be honoured.
I can see its tempting though, but do the right thing.
I can see its tempting though, but do the right thing.
If you'd claimed they would have either not paid out as you didn't honour your part of the contract... or if they were in a good mood they would have paid but deducted the unpaid premium from the payout.
As it stands now they are naturally going to try to fix their cock up. It will costs them more to take it legal than the premium is worth so my gut feel is they won't bother taking it much further if you don't pay it, but this will vary from insurer to insurer.
I guess it depends where you stand morally how you want to play it. Personally I'd pay up as there is the risk they'll take it legal and also charge you for that pleasure! Which insurer is it by the way?
Source: I used to work in commercial insurance where we'd have written this off as a cock up, but at least tried to recover by sending out a couple of letters!!!
As it stands now they are naturally going to try to fix their cock up. It will costs them more to take it legal than the premium is worth so my gut feel is they won't bother taking it much further if you don't pay it, but this will vary from insurer to insurer.
I guess it depends where you stand morally how you want to play it. Personally I'd pay up as there is the risk they'll take it legal and also charge you for that pleasure! Which insurer is it by the way?
Source: I used to work in commercial insurance where we'd have written this off as a cock up, but at least tried to recover by sending out a couple of letters!!!
If you had tried to claim, I'm not sure it would have been honoured. Its quite a common scam to get the insurance certificate and then cancel the payments. Get stopped by the police and its 'I have an insurance certificate officer - look'.
Not advising one way or the other - probably worth seeking legal advice.
Not advising one way or the other - probably worth seeking legal advice.
Thanks for replies. We agree on a moral standing take the 20% discount and feel good. Trouble is how many times do insurance companies refuse payments or cut payments. This company had done this to loads of clients we are not the only one, we know that as a fact. We have till mid Jan to reply, but its good to collect your views also.
My advice would be pay it - yes, it is their fault, but I would think somewhere in their terms they have a right to claim their money even after the fact. And of course you need to keep a clean record as said above...
Completely different industry, but I had to recover over £150k of unbilled telephony usage charges from a client recently, some over 3 years old, all as a result of an internal audit. The client objected, I took it up with finance, turns out we have the right to invoice and collect charges for up to six years after they are incurred
Completely different industry, but I had to recover over £150k of unbilled telephony usage charges from a client recently, some over 3 years old, all as a result of an internal audit. The client objected, I took it up with finance, turns out we have the right to invoice and collect charges for up to six years after they are incurred
Good result! 
Usa