£10 to cancel auto-renew - wtf

LizardKing · 9 Jun 2020 at 16:45

Im sure the double glaze salemen of the 90's would be proud of this one!

Renewal Cancellations
As per section 34 of our Terms and Conditions, which you accepted and opted into at point of purchase, your policy is an automatically renewing policy. Under your continuous payment authority, granted at section 26 of our Terms and Conditions, we will automatically debit your card up to 7 days prior to the expiry of your policy for your next years premiums. If you have received your renewal invite and wish to opt out of auto-renewal then as per section 33 of our Terms and Conditions, you are required to pay a £4.99 administration fee to have your policy taken out of the renewal cycle. If you fail to follow the process and your card is debited, please note that premiums charged to your card are non-refundable.To cancel your auto-renewal, please select ‘Auto Renewal - Cancel auto renewed policy' as your reason code for cancellation.
What happens and when?
To process a cancellation there is a £4.99 administration fee payable to Nova Direct and a £4.99 fee payable to the Insurer PEX Insure, who are the policy administrators.

Yeah im aware, should have read the full t&c's when i took it out but surely this sort of practise has no legal standing?!

edit having scoured the ~8-10 documents they sent when signing up there is no section 34, very tempted to cancel any dd and report any charges as fraudulent.

LizardKing · 9 Jun 2020 at 17:33

Swifty55 said:
Found on their website?

Thanks for that

still very underhand imo

LizardKing · 9 Jun 2020 at 21:14

Yep. It's a shame the reviews were not like that a year ago otherwise I'd never have gone with them. I suspect they may go through a name change soon!

LizardKing · 9 Jun 2020 at 23:36

Cheers chap, out of principle i've already sent them a complaint and will likely follow on with the ombudsman as it doesn't "seem" right that they can get away with a cheap move. Like you say its probably just low enough to make people grumble and move on with there lifes.
The policy is underwritten by Markerstudy Chaucer who i've been with in the past via other brokers so never saw an issue with Nova initially. the tenner probably just lines the pocket of the capitalist snotter who came up with the hair-brained idea!

LizardKing · 11 Jun 2020 at 23:27

Rids said:
Did some digging, sent you a trust as didn't want to post on a public forum, hope that is ok.

Thanks for that

i did reply but not sure if you've seen it or not.

Slight update for anyone

left a few snotty reviews around the place and they called the next day with an offer of waiving the fee and asked if i could remove the reviews as they considered it solved. A few choice words were had with that offer.
They then phoned back after a while as they couldn't cancel the charge, a minor investigation from them revealed the original agent got it wrong and car insurance doesn't fall under one of there cancellation fees (not that the above site suggests anything of the kind nor the documents i received). Still waiting on a response to my cancellation request via email and complaint. I suspect this is not quite over