Has anybody been able to continue driving after having an insurance policy cancelled? I’m in bits

[GraceyBeaker]

I’m mid 20s. Passed my test yesterday, absolutely over the moon. I have a car ready for me, my partner’s old one. It’s a 2007 Yaris. The car did fail its MOT a month ago but it’s only a small part replacement that we will get round to doing now that I’ve passed. It’s essential I drive ASAP for various reasons. It’s too far to walk to most places and I can’t do buses, within 5 minutes of being on a bus I have to get off to be sick. I have severe motion sickness on buses.

Problem is, I don’t think I can afford any insurance. When I was 18 I tried learning with my dad and used a monetary gift from my grandparents to buy a little car. We arranged learners insurance, a black box policy. When filling in the forms we said we’d be practicing 2x times a week. However, my dad never kept to his promise of practicing with me, constantly fobbing me off when I asked and so we went months without using the car. This made the insurance company think we had turned the black box off and were driving without it, which resulted in them cancelling the policy. I received notice at the time that they were cancelling the policy but being a naive 18 year old I never realised it would affect me going forward, so I just let it happen.

Now when applying for insurance I have to declare I’ve had a cancelled policy, and my quotes are all £8000+. I have no idea what to do, I feel like I’m being treated like a criminal.

Any advice?

Loads of new young drivers are being quoted what you have even with no cancelled insurance. Seems to just be the cost now

And now the situation gets even bloody weirder. Just seen an email from customer service that was sent at 5pm in response to my call before. Apparently they looked into it further and clarified that “the policy was cancelled because you went 28 days without driving the car”. This is apparently stated on the insurance documents, but I see nothing about 28 days when I search the documents. Then the email says a policy cancelled for this reason does not need to be declared to other insurance providers and that the company is typically lenient towards policyholders that have a policy cancelled for this reason. Furthermore, it states that had I contacted them at the time, they would have reinstated the policy.

I never did at the time, because it was pointless as I wasn’t getting to drive.

This seems like good news but I’m not quite convinced as I was told otherwise on the phone (that I should declare it) and how can this company speak on behalf of other providers by saying they don’t need to know?

what a mindfuck

My 21qyo son had a policy cancelled because he didn't drive the car for 5 weeks. Its outrageous but nothing you can do apparently. I ran a quote it was £31k.

I got a fully inclusive lease vehicle brand new for £100pcm more than his previous insurance cost, but sadly you may need to be 21yo to do this - check with Marmalade.

An alternative is to hire a car when you need one, but that's expensive and not really practical.

Or put yourself down as a named driver on someone's policy, just remember they have to drive that car at least as much as you.

To reduce my own insurance costs when I got a new car - who knew it more than doubled your insurance 🙄 I bought an additional insurance policy to cover your excess and loaded my policy with a big excess. This dropped my insurance down by 25%.

I don't know if this will help, I really feel for you. Car insurance costs are beyond stupid to cover the risks of eVs.

And I still wouldn’t be comfortable not declaring it now because I’ve already declared it when running quotes on comparison sites. Should’ve used fake details when obtaining quotes in principal!

But you’ve got it in writing from them saying you do t need to declare it so don’t declare it!!!!! Sorted

I haven't read the whole thread but have you tried the financial ombudsman?

If you have this in writing from the insurance company that cancelled the policy, along with the reason for cancellation (which is very minor compared to reasons such as repeated speeding offences etc) then what you could do is seek advice from one other insurer to determine their stance on this. Basically it’s a cancellation for lack of use that they would have been comfortable reinstating at their own admission, as opposed to them saying they deem you uninsurable due to road offences etc, so may well be considered differently by insurers.

That’s a good way to phrase it, “cancelled due to lack of use”. I’ll use that going forward.

At least I can now print this email off and bring it with me when I go to the insurance broker branch

That sounds positive. So are they still not going to insure you having said that?

No idea as the lad I spoke to on the phone before said I was blacklisted until 2027. But the way he worded it is sounded like he was just reading from a generic policy that they don’t insure people for X amount of years after a cancelled policy. I don’t think he was checking my personal account.

Good luck OP. Many things about insurance are very weird. As are actuaries....it shouldn't matter too much about having got some quotes with what turns out to be incorrect statements, you can just amend them and hopefully get an affordable quote. There are some rather worrying stats on the disproportionate rise of premiums that isn't explained by corresponding claims costs, so I'm quite surprised by the slavish defence of an industry with some of the highest margins in financial services.

They don’t make it easy . MOH was refused insurance at renewal as we have a Range Rover which you can’t insure for love or money .now normally you have to declare if you have been refused insurance , but their letter said we did not have to declare this refusal to any other insurance company 🤷‍♀️

At least if I go to a broker and speak to somebody face to face I can present the email to them and explain everything. Applying online or even on the phone (where wires can get crossed easier) doesn’t give me the best opportunity to cover my back. You make some very good points in this post

It’s especially ridiculous when they dump “Have you had insurance cancelled or refused?” Into one question. Then you don’t get an opportunity to explain which one it was or why. You were refused because of the value of the car, but on an online quote site they would just see that you answered “yes” to the question and they can assume whatever they want!

If there's one thing I've learned about insurance companies, you get a different answer every time you contact them. It's so infuriating. No-one really cares about providing good quality customer service - it's the bare minimum usually!

Can't you take out insurance but have you as a named driver, rather than the main driver? Try this and see what the quotes are?

I can't see a reason not to quote online with a different answer to the have you ever had a policy cancelled / refused question -- some super sophisticated model may take it in the other responses and give you a higher quote or not quote you, but you have your explanation if ever challenged and the other quotes won't be part of your contract if/when you sign up (also, try some of the companies that aren't on the aggregators if you haven't already.)

I think after their most recent communication OP, that I would be tempted to write to the original insurer, copying in what you said about 'had I contacted them at the time, they would have reinstated the policy' and asking whether they are able to do this now, particularly in view of the fact that you have actually passed your test in the interim, and also the fact that you are now considerably older. Can't do any harm.

Also, I think those people who are saying you should have known, blah, blah, are being a bit pious, as I have granddaughters of a similar age to what you were at the time, and they would have ignored the warning letter, just as you and your DF did. However, your DF really should have looked into the warning letter, or at least told you to, particularly as this is all his fault in the first place. I do h.ope you get this sorted OP

Have heard stories of people getting their insurance cancelled because the companies have found that they did several quotes with slightly different details each time, meaning that the insurance company doesn’t know which details are true or not. Happened to a friend’s DD who messed around with her occupation on insurance sites. she was an undergraduate but found it was cheaper to put her part-time job title (childcare worker) as her occupation rather than putting that she was a student. She signed up for the policy then had it cancelled a few weeks later because they said they couldn’t trust what her job title was.

Also don't see any harm in adding certainly in quotes additional named drivers such as your partner to see what it does to the price. They may just be there in case of emergency even if there's no plan for them to drive. Or they may not be driving day to day but if you were to use the car for long trips to see family / go on holiday then it's arguably safer to share the driving and you'd want to check to make sure adding them wouldn't put the price up too much...

The car did fail its MOT a month ago but it’s only a small part replacement that we will get round to doing now that I’ve passed.

Sorry haven't read the full thread, just checking you are going to fix the car and put it through its MOT again, you can't drive it if its failed ?

Yes, we won’t be going ahead with an insurance policy until the car is repaired. But I did want to get some quotes so I know what I’m dealing with, I knew it’d be problematic due to the cancelled policy so I wanted to get a head start

Yes I do think people were a bit nasty to me. I know 18 is an adult as I said, but many insurance companies try to get parents very involved in young driver policies these days and even advertise as such. I believe that Marmalade (not the company I used) insist on the secondary driver being a parent if the driver is below a certain age.

And also, insurance companies don’t tend to give a warning stating “Your future insurance premiums will be affected if we have to cancel this policy due to your not sticking to the terms.” They really should give this warning, you wouldn’t necessarily know until you find out the hard way.

even in credit agreements they warn that your credit score will be affected if you don’t stick to their agreement