Quote:
Originally Posted by Gate Keeper
This morning I have been going through the auto renewal subscriptions and stopping them, in particular the ones who reward loyalty with a demand of full payment and not discounted.
|
I have gone right off auto renewal for insurance and I think that it should be banned in law after an awful experience with Hastings Direct. Hastings demands that you must call them to cancel and it will not accept ANY other means of notification. If you do manage to get through to them you will run the gauntlet of a pressure sale but what if you can't get through? Your phone might be down or, as is often the case with an automated answering service, you might have lost the will to live before you got to speak to a person.
Via this experience I found that you cannot insure elsewhere until your previous insurer cancels the auto renewal, apparently it is illegal to have a car insured on more than one policy. Over all I found Hastings to be a very stroppy outfit with more than a whiff of shoddy sharp-practice about it. Auto renewal binds you to outfits like this and prevents you going elsewhere until you can batter down their door and get them to release you from their shackles.
I have recently returned to the AA for my car insurance. It is on auto renewal but I trust them to be service orientated as I've always found them to be friendly and helpful over the years. The difference between it and Hastings is like chalk and cheese. No more obstruction or sharp practices like pretending that they could not obtain proof of NCB from your previous insurer when your previous insurer confirms that they haven't even asked for it. All done by Hastings so that they can harass you with threats of we will charge you for this or charge you for that and WE WILL cancel your policy and charge you for doing so if - blah, blah, blah. I'd never had a problem with an insurer in all my years of driving, never seen anything like what I experienced with Hastings Direct. It is a stain on the sector and good riddance to it.
