Insurance question

[jampots]

Dh has been telephoning to get quotes for our car insurance renewal. He's very careful to go through all the modifications etc with each insurer so as to make it (a) legal and (b) comparable. Anyway he settled on one which was about £50 cheaper than everyone else, he's paid in full and the policy documents have come through today. On them he noticed that they have not covered me for business use despite dh discussing this with them and opting for it. So now they want a further £90 to cover us. Do we have a contract (albeit verbal) or would we have to stump up the extra now that we have the policy

Sadly you do not have a verbal contract as it cannot be proved one way or the other where the error occurred. However, I would expect an element of goodwill to be present here. Which company did you insure with, is it a broker or a direct insurer? If it's a broker, then the additional cost is applied by the company you have actually been placed with and not the broker, and therefore they have no control over this cost. However, when you speak to them I would say to them that you had advised them of the business use for yourself, and that this had been omitted from the policy. Ask if they apply an admin charge for amendments to the policy, and if so, you feel that in the interest of good customer service, this at least should be written off. If you cancel your policy within the first 14 days, they have to refund your premiums on a pro-rata basis, i.e. only charge for the days you've been covered, if you cancel after that the refund policy becomes a lot more complicated, so if you are going to cancel then I would do so sooner rather than later.

For the record, I worked for a large car insurance company for 3 years so am very aware of insurance policy.

hth, and let me know if I can help any further :)

Jampots, to my shame I have been in insurance for nearly 6 years

I would ask to have the original call listened to again. The majority of insurers use call centres and the calls are recorded so that they can audit the staff. I know that the company I work for (one of the big banks) would honour the original quote if the advisor had clearly been advised of business use but didn't amend the quote accordingly. They may amend the terms and conditions to take into account the business use which may limit the cover they are offering but the premium should stay the same.

However, they will get you at 1st renewal and up your premium bigtime!

Sorry, don't know the answer to your question, but I just saved about £70 on my renewal price by doing it online with confused.com. You put in all your details once, and they trawl through all the insurers and email you a list of companies and prices. If you do have to get another quote, it will save you time. Hope this helps.