Gentlemen, a warning to all those of you who have their car insurance payments made by direct debit from your bank…
My car insurance was arranged online by the g/f and a direct debit set up from the bank, each monthly payment was set up to be paid out the day after my pay day…nice and easy, no problems. Each month the payments went out on time, all was good…until last Thursday.
I’m coming home in the car, happened to look in my rear view mirror and there’s police car inches from my boot lid, a few minutes later the blue lights go on and the driver is waving at me to pull over, which I did. My car had appeared on his in-car computer thing as an uninsured vehicle, he informed me, so I gave him all the details of the insurance policy which I keep stored on my pda fone. He made a few checks whilst his colleague did a quick visual check of the car, and then hit me with the fact that the insurance company had cancelled the policy last month, so my car WAS uninsured. He wrote me up a statuary penalty notice, which means a £200 fine and six points on my otherwise clean for forty + years driving licence, then informed me that technically he could confiscate my car which would mean another £175 plus VAT to get it back, but to his credit and because I lived so close to where we were, he agreed to waive that bit and escorted me home, still with all the blue lights flashing. Much to the neighbours delight…
When I got indoors I phoned the insurance company and asked what the **** was going on…it turns out that the computer had tried to take a payment out one minute before midnight on the arranged day and not one minute after, which meant that my salary hadn’t been credited to the account by one minute. The pompous little git on the other end of the phone informed me that they had sent me an email informing me of the lack of sufficient funds in my account and that they had therefore cancelled the policy on the grounds of a missed payment. No leeway, no apologies, tough luck, you are not insured with our company any longer, have a nice day sir. Their email had gone straight into my junk mail folder and thence been deleted, I never check my junk mail…do you? I didn’t have a leg to stand on, nothing I could do about it…just take the ticket from the nice policeman, write a cheque and wish for a very large scotch.
I phoned the hairydog.com, got a very good quote, bought the policy and paid up front, no direct debit, just paid it and smiled graciously…so I know I’m insured properly now.
So chaps…the moral behind all this?
Check your direct debits for all your important stuff regularly, make sure your insurances are all being paid out when they should be, keep a very wary eye on your bank account as well as your rear view mirror….
Oh, and make sure that you allow emails from any company you deal with online to enter your inbox and not get directed to your junk mail folder..I never thought about that point. One click of the mouse and I'd have been able to something about it and avoid the penalty.
A £200 fine hurts, six points on the licence doesn’t do you a lot of favours either...
Rich