Car Insurance Cancellation

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Hi my wife is selling her car to We Buy Any Car on Saturday. The car is still insured until 4 September 15. She will NOT be buying a replacement car.

She owns the car but I am the named driver, I own another car for which she is the named driver.

I had a quick look on the insurance policy and it states that there is a £55 cancellation fee.

The policy also states: “Mr Belly (me) may also drive with the owners permission a motor car that is not owned by or registered to, or hired, rented or leased to, them, their business partner or their employer, or is being kept or used in connection with their or their employer’s business”.

WHAT EVER THAT MEANS?

I remember some years ago that I had to cancel an insurance policy when buying a new car because the insurance company I was with didn’t insure new cars! (Thanx Swinton for putting me on that policy in the first place).

In that instance I stated to Swinton that instead of paying for the policy cancellation I could just let it expire in six weeks time. She stated that that wasn’t possible because I wouldn’t get a No Claims Bonus for the new car and would have to start from scratch.

So would it be legal NOT to cancel the policy on the grounds that I might do what it states above [the part I don’t understand] and then NOT renew the policy on 4 September and then I assume the wife will be sent a No Claims Bonus certificate?
 
I had a quick look on the insurance policy and it states that there is a £55 cancellation fee.


^^ Work out pro-rata what they would need to pay back. Assuming you paid the year upfront. devide that by 12 and times it by how many full months are left. If you get it done before the 4th I'm guessing 4 months. deduct the £55 from that.

If you pay monthly give them notice you'll no ending the direct debit as you no longer own the car. I can't see them getting too worked up over £55 as they will want your custom in the future.
 
i got stung for £50 cancellation charge by Churchill when i flogged my pug last year probably industry standard fee, bit rough tho with only six weeks left on policy. mine had six months to run.
 
Thanx Haggisman - the law's an ass!

I would have thought the same as the guy in the link who thought that once the vehicle was sold he was no longer responsible for it. Seems sensible.

In the army in Germany I put my car up for sale and a guy came to the house and said he'd like to buy it and wanted to drive it away immediately after handing over the cash (he didn't have the money with him). I asked him about insurance and he said "I can drive it on your insurance", I told him I wasn't prepared to allow him to drive on my insurance, as such I never heard from him again.

Later I spoke to the guy in the regiment whose job it was to ensure everyone had their car BFG'd. MOT type inspections where done by the regiment, number plates were obtained though the military etc, etc.

The BFG guy told me that as soon as I sold the vehicle my responsibility for the vehicle ended and I would have been right to just get the guy to hand over the money. It would then have been his responsibility to ensure he was insured etc, etc.

I did learn (back in UK) that policies continued after the sale of a vehicle (following my dealings with Swinton) but I never would have thought it fair or legal that once the vehicle had been sold to a third party the former owner could be made responsible for subsequent owners who might NOT bother to insure the vehicle.

I can never understand the insurance system. I was driving the wife's car, someone hits me up the back, the insurance company finds that I'm NOT to blame and I get the excess back. It has to show on the insurance policy, but what I thought was really bad was that in addition to being shown against me, it also had to be shown against the wife (on another policy), so we are both shown as having been involved in an accident on the same day with the same amount (money wise) of damage!

Another, I drive my wife's car, she had nine years NCD, each year I'd moved insurance companies getting the best deal from a comparison site, the following year the renewal gives her NCD, I move to another company and at the end of that year the NCD is NOT in her name but mine! They don't inform of that at the start of the insurance period and when I challenged it they said they only give NCD to the main driver. So as the wife drives my car, insured by another company, I'll have two NCD and she's have none!

Some companies have more years NCD as maximum than others. Say nine years, 7 years and 5 years. So I have 9 years and I buy a new policy from another firm telling them I have 9 years and at the end of the year I get a NCD showing 7 years!

And..... they always seem to speak a different language then everyone else! Well at least me.

When I used Swinton for the car I brought back to UK they got me a policy which I kept going until the year of the scrappage scheme when I scrapped it in for a new car (which the wife captured). When I went to transfer the policy from scrapped car to the new one, Swinton were unable to do it on their computer and said they'd call me at work. It transpired that the company they'd got my insurance for (8 years of so) didn't insure NEW cars. So I had to pay a £50 cancellation fee, the woman at Swinton said she had never heard of that before, but I had to pay.

Thanx again Haggisman
 
I had a quick look on the insurance policy and it states that there is a £55 cancellation fee.


^^ Work out pro-rata what they would need to pay back. Assuming you paid the year upfront. devide that by 12 and times it by how many full months are left. If you get it done before the 4th I'm guessing 4 months. deduct the £55 from that.

If you pay monthly give them notice you'll no ending the direct debit as you no longer own the car. I can't see them getting too worked up over £55 as they will want your custom in the future.

I'm NOT sure if I'd get back 3/12th. Something in the back of my mind tells me that at the time of the Swinton episode the woman said that if someone cancelled let's say at the three month point they'd only get 50% back. I think I only had about 6 weeks left on the policy and I seem to think she said I'd get nothing or next to nothing.
 
Based on the OP's posts, I figured this was one of those threads where we replace certain letters with other ones?

Last time I checked, the word "thanks" didn't contain the letter "x" unless you were a 12 year old girl at a sleepover

One thing you seem to have missed Haggisman is that I replaced “two” letters with “one” an efficiency. You did NOT. I actually replaced the K and S with an X. How unobservant of you! I didn't write Thankx, if I had then perhaps you would have been correct but I didn't.

Now Haggisman if you raise two fingers, let’s say your index finger and your middle finger and you write an S on one and a K on the other and now count those fingers from the left to the right….. One plus another one (I’m NOT going too fast for you am I?) you should have counted two…… amazing.

Having been a team player all my life (seven operational emergency tours of Northern Ireland, one in the desert etc) I usually don’t take notice of pedants. I find them unpopular, disliked and hated by other members of a team, they rarely get promoted, very few people attend their farewell parties and fewer still attend their funerals!

As far as sleeping over with a twelve year old girl Haggisman, well normally I say what someone does behind closed doors is their own business but if you are sleeping over with such girls, I suggest you need help and your name entering on the sexual offenders register perhaps? Where I come from, polite society has a name for such people.

Reply as you see fit, as I mentioned I don’t take notice of pedants.



I had a quick look on the insurance policy and it states that there is a £55 cancellation fee.


^^ Work out pro-rata what they would need to pay back. Assuming you paid the year upfront. devide that by 12 and times it by how many full months are left. If you get it done before the 4th I'm guessing 4 months. deduct the £55 from that.

If you pay monthly give them notice you'll no ending the direct debit as you no longer own the car. I can't see them getting too worked up over £55 as they will want your custom in the future.

Yes thanx Pooker you were right, the wife phoned the insurance company. We owed them £55 they owed us £37 and they waived the difference and we phoned them on a 0800 number too.
 
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