to think this is illegal?

[CruzControl]

I have a provisional driving license and DH has a full, clean driving license. I was a named driver on his insurance. I had a seizure and the doctor said to stop driving (I barely did anyway) and contact the DVLA (which I did). We contacted our insurance company to tell them and remove me as a named driver. They've spent the last three months trying to decide what to do (apparently this is a VERY complicated situation for their tiny brains to understand).
They've now come back to us and said they're cancelling our insurance. We have to declare to all future insurers that we've had our insurance cancelled. In addition, they are charging us £125 for a cancellation fee!
They're saying they can't leave me on the policy because I don't have a valid license (because of the seizure) and that they can't take me off the policy without cancelling the whole policy.
Our insurance premium with everyone else will skyrocket and we've lost our no claims bonus - which seems unbelievably unfair. AIBU to think this is illegal? If so, what can I do about it?

Haven't read the whole thread, just all the OP's posts. Hope you get somewhere OP, definitely worth going to a newspaper with it. Daily Mail used to have someone you could write to who would get involved to help resolve situations like these where you were getting nowhere with unreasonable You wonder the insurance company can get it so wrong, but then you read some of these replies to your posts and realise the world is full of people that have difficulty following a simple conversation.

And having said that, I see there are a couple of words missing from my post, so people may well have difficulty following it

I would try calling the Motor Insurers Bureau. They will have the exact information about your policy and what it was noted down as. I had a non fault accident wrongly recorded as a fault one. I contacted them and they amended it for me. Admiral my insurance company were absolutely useless. Their mistake cost me hundreds of pounds as I was seen as s riskier driver. Their number is 01908 830001.

@CruzControl I was wondering whether you had had any success in dealing with this.

So did they have you down as holding a full license?

Doesn’t sound right - we have frequently added & removed the kids as named drivers (provisional & full) over the years without any problem.

The text from the insuer's email makes it entirely clear what has happened and it should be easily sorted.

The insurance have misunderstood. They think that OP didn't have a valid license at the inception of the policy rather than that she has surrendered her licence during the term of the policy.

This might be because she notified DVLA before insurance or could just be a cock up.

A phonecall to explain should sort this with no need to wait for the 8 week complaint process. At the moment the policy has been cancelled due to fraud/misrepresentation but this is incorrect so the insurer should correct the database and OP should be able to insure without declaring a cancellation once it has been corrected.

You should have just said remove names driver as no longer driving the vehicle.... I'm not sure why you divulged all the info. But aside from that no they shouldn't be able to do that and I would be going down the complaints procedure

I work in car insurance. Everytime a change is made to a policy, it gets re-rated to reflect that days underwriting criteria. The criteria can change all the time. I think they tried to remove OP from the policy, but OPs H didn’t meet the UW criteria to keep the policy running with him as the only driver. Therefore the only option was to cancel.

I do think there has been some mix up- which might be explained by you staying on the policy a further 3 months without a licence, as per your OP. But I don’t think you should have to declare cancellation to other companies as you haven’t actually been fraudulent. Getting the call listened to from when your husband originally called should prove this. Hopefully the complaints process will sort that out.

This sounds like an absolute nightmare situation and that your insurers have fucked up massively.
I’ve worked in motor insurance for over 15 years and now work in complaints .
You’ve done the right thing in raising a formal complaint. Insurers do have up to 8 weeks to investigate a complaint but a lot of the time it doesn’t take as long.
When there is a risk of more harm being caused a complaint can be escalated to a priority case. More harm is for example in your case where you now have to pay a higher premium as a result of their error.

Removing a named driver is normally a straight forward situation. Sometimes it can affect the price and customers can be asked to pay more or sometimes get a refund. Insurers can legally charge an admin fee for this, morally a lot don’t when a driver is removed due to ill heath or has passed away.

If you have given all of the information and in a timely manner (after a license is revoked by the DVLA we expect to be informed within 7 days) you have done nothing wrong. It can’t be classed as a cancelled policy on the database. However because they are saying it is currently you are correct and will need to declare this on the new insurance until it is resolved.
Don’t rely on online quotes when you tick the box online it will not reflect the correct information.
Call around over the phone for quotes. When asked the refused insurance question explain your insurers have cancelled but it is under dispute and you are going down the formal complaint route. Explain the circumstances. A lot of insurers will take the facts on board when they are explained, whereas online it will rate you as the highest risk because as you say they will be classing it as a policy cancelled for fraud- which has the highest premiums attached.

There is no way it is possible for your husband to have lost his no claims bonus. Does it say that on the cancellation letter that he is losing the full 5 years? Even when policies have been voided for fraud (legitimately) I have never seen or heard of any cases where this would affect NCB.

When you are looking at alternative insurance make a note of the prices if a cancellation has not occurred. Get written evidence or screen shot this. If the complaint is not dealt with accurately and it ends up being escalated to FOS they have the power to force the insurer to put you back in your original state before the error occurred. This includes refunding any additional amounts you have been charged by a new insurer. It’s a lot easier if you have quotes to back this up as a lot of the time the insurer will only look at the premium difference with the new insurer not taking into account 50 other insurers could have quoted at lower prices.

Have you got the letter from Dva saying you have surrendered your license on medical grounds?

@Lexilooo

The text from the insuer's email makes it entirely clear what has happened and it should be easily sorted.

The insurance have misunderstood. They think that OP didn't have a valid license at the inception of the policy rather than that she has surrendered her licence during the term of the policy.

This might be because she notified DVLA before insurance or could just be a cock up.

A phonecall to explain should sort this with no need to wait for the 8 week complaint process. At the moment the policy has been cancelled due to fraud/misrepresentation but this is incorrect so the insurer should correct the database and OP should be able to insure without declaring a cancellation once it has been corrected.

I was going to type almost exactly this. The wording the insurers used clearly implies they believe you misled them, and this is the only thing I can think of that would make their actions make sense.

Either the call handler misunderstood what you told them, or they entered incorrect (or at least ambiguous) information into their computer system which has caused the underwriters to misunderstand what has happened.

Follow the advice in recent posts. When complaining and when communicating with the ombudsman if things get that far, make sure you set out the timeline of events very clearly, and provide evidence of every event. I'm optimistic about the likely outcome.