Hibernian messing up my insurance

Turlock

Was looking to upgrade my old 1.4 car which I had insured (still do) with Hibernian. Started weighing up different cars based on premiums taken from insurance websites, I wanted something powerful and sporty so was aiming high.

Went from Golf GTI (mk2) to Corrado G60 to Integra type R to MR2 Turbo to my final choice the Nissan Skyline R33 GTS-T.

Unfortunatley the Skyline seems to be blacklisted everywhere due to boy racers so everyone told me where to go bar St. Pauls who gave me a whopping €7000 quote. I checked with Hibernian last and after the price was referred it came back as €2500.

This is where it gets tricky, basically when I was given the quote I was appartently told that it was on top of my current premium for the rest of the year. I pay in direct debits over 10 months @ 196 euro per month (24/m/1 NCB/Full License on the 1.4)

I am quite partial to the Skyline and so with a premium of €2500 / €250ish per month I was pretty happy to focus on finding one. In the meantime I called to double check a few things on about 4 or 5 occasions, nagging phone calls but I wanted to be sure e.g. As the cars a jap import is the quote still valid etc..

One of these such calls was when I rang to confirm if there would be any charge for changing my car mid year and what would my premium be per month after that. I was told that the €2500 was the quote for the entire year and so my premium would work out at roughly €250 per month (she worked out an exact figure). I was delighted with that so asked for it to be sent out as a written confirmation, I was told that it was not their policy to send out written confirmations but that she would update the system with what we had discussed.

I found the car and the day before buying picking it up I rang to put it on cover so I could drive it home, there was a bit of a mess as they required the Vehicle Reg. in my name before they could put it on cover for me which of course would mean a ~3 week turnaround (wtf?) before I could get insured.

Eventually they agreed to put it on temporary cover for an extra €209 for the month to give me the time to get the vehicle reg transferred. Not happy but I paid it.

Now the fun part, rang today to confirm that I had the docs and find out how to get them to them. I was then informed that the €2500 was to cover the car for the remainder of the year and that it would be additional to my current premium meaning a hike from €196 per month to a whopping (Drum Roll!) €650(ish).

I was raging, when (with a little smirk) I told her to check the system for the previous update when I had confirmed the price to be €250 per month, she told me there was nothing there.

After talking to a few people / Supervisors this is what they have on their system, events happened in order line by lnie

Customer Rang for quote for Skyline, had to refer so will call back
Rang back and quote given as €2514 explained this was additional to customers premium (they say they did anyway)

I rang about 4/5 times here to confirm various specs like jap import/ what was required to take out cover. This is when they confirmed my monthly payments but none of these were logged against my policy

Customer Rang to put Skyline on Temp. Cover for €209 euro

Now the way their system works is that they record every phone call that's recieved (like the actual phone conversation) but don't match them to policies. To match them they check up the entries in the system and then check the call recording software for that time but as they didn't make a note of my confirmation of the monthly premium in their system they can't match it up to a phone call. I phoned from work and it's a private number so they can't search on that either.

I am to get the phone records from my work and I'm sure that they'll find the phone call and see that I'm right. What's got me is if I get the cheapo premium this year what happens at my renewal?? I bought the car based on the fact that my premium would be about 2000 every year and now it's going to cost me about 6000 EVERY year.

If i'm found to be right do I have a leg to stand on if I go looking for compensation? If I had of got the quote in writing there would be no issue I just wouldn't have bought the car.

These are hard cars to shift so I'm pretty much stuck with my €12500 uninsurable car

Sorry for the Essay but any help greatly appreciated:(

Abelloid

Hibernian are complete tossers, they did something similar to me after coming home from the UK with the car,
they repeatedly came up with reasons to cancel the policy, my favourite was -
"you have 2.8mm of tread on the front tyres and 4.2 on the rears - not roadworthy"
The tread was noted on an engineers report/road worthiness cert :rolleyes:

After shouting down the phone for weeks I gave up and went to AXA.

Ask them for your NCB and shop around until your policy is up.

Turlock

JustinOval wrote:

Hibernian are complete tossers, they did something similar to me after coming home from the UK with the car,
they repeatedly came up with reasons to cancel the policy, my favourite was -
"you have 2.8mm of tread on the front tyres and 4.2 on the rears - not roadworthy"
The tread was noted on an engineers report/road worthiness cert :rolleyes:

After shouting down the phone for weeks I gave up and went to AXA.

Ask them for your NCB and shop around until your policy is up.

Insurance companies sicken me, all my quotes with other companies were based on me being 25 so I'm just screwed.

I'll be finding out if I was right tomorrow so I'll post up and let you know

Abelloid

I was 29 and had 6 years claim free when I got the runaround, try to avoid call centres and go into one of their branches.

unkel

Nightmare scenario

You (thought you) made absolutely sure that the quote was €2.5k. You knew this sounded very cheap, but you checked and doublechecked the quote. Then you went to buy the car based on the fact that you were able to afford the insurance. Totally reasonable behaviour. I don't know if you could have done anything else except insisting on a quote in writing

Not sure if you have any leg to stand on. I'd sure fight if I were you. Keep ringing them (stay polite but insist). Best of luck with it!

Turlock

Cheers folks, as you say I checked and double-checked and really insisted to get it in writing but they wouldn't send it out. If thats there policy there's nothing much else I could do, didn't have any reason to take it as far as calling a supervisor as I had no reason not to trust them.

As they couldn't find my calls there was nothing they could do as there really isn't any proof of my over the phone quote. If it did go to court I really believe that it would go in my favour as it's clear they don't log every query to the system and the Supervisor has confirmed to me that their policy is not to send out written quotations so if someone got a quote and the call centre didn't bother updating the system there is no proof what so ever that the person ever called. This also confirms the response I would have gotten when asking for the written quote.

What someone else twigged was that even though they can't find my phone calls on their system due to them showing up as private numbers, I had called from work so I will have the phone records off my work phone.

I'll be back onto them tomorrow with the list of calls and will be able to confirm what I was told.

Still though what happens next year :eek:

mik_da_man

Did you not get a reference number for your quote??
As far as I remember whenever I got a quote over the phone I wanted to keep/ go back to I got a reference number.
If you have this and it was for the €2.5K they would have no comeback.

Abelloid

Stick with it a little longer, they "didn't receive" my first engineers report but when I cancelled my policy and requested all my documents be returned
the "missing" report was included, with their date stamp on it. :mad:

cargrouch

JustinOval wrote:

try to avoid call centres and go into one of their branches.

Vital! Don't ever deal with a call centre, you have a 50-50 chance of a foul up. I've had similar experiences with Quinn, getting different answers when I did ring up again to confirm stuff. All with sub 2000yoyo cars though!

Lastly, no car is hard to shift at the right price

Kimbot

Even at that a Skyline with 1 Year NCB and a 24 Year Old male..... I would imagine their 6000 quote is right!!

Ring the Irish Insurance Federation and see what they can do for you!!

lomb

will be about 2169 with www.xsdirect.ie
if u are 25 or up, with 4 grand excess.
theres no way hibernian would insure that for 2500 with a low excess, maybe closer to 4 id say.

Vegeta

mik_da_man wrote:

Did you not get a reference number for your quote??
As far as I remember whenever I got a quote over the phone I wanted to keep/ go back to I got a reference number.
If you have this and it was for the €2.5K they would have no comeback.

what this guy said^^

they have to give you a ref number so you can ring them back up and tell them you 'd like to take this policy. Next time if they wont give it to you in writing get a ref number

Orlee

Sh1t one Turlock

Hope you get it sorted soon! Mmmmmmmm, skyline

Big Balls

Just to give you an example Turlock..

I have a policy with Hibernian. It's €1913 per year, fully comp.

To change to a Ford Focus ST the premium was going to jump to over €3,000 fully comp. I'm the same age as you but I have over 5 years NCB. For you to get covered on a Skyline for €2,500 would be insane...

Anyone in your family you could get named cover under on the Skyline?

Turlock

Update:
Got my phone records today and I had made about 6 or 7 calls to hibernians number which they don't have logged. I rang the supervisor I was talking to yesterday and gave her, to the minute, times and dates of the calls.

Got a call back this afternoon from someone to confirm that the phone I was calling from was a private number (they could have matched on the incoming number otherwise) and the usual stuff ("explained to you in first phone call that this was for the year"/ "the quote till end of year now is x" ,as if asking did I want to take it up/ we don't send out written confirmations/ still looking for calls)

I was onto a Solictor who's view was that yeah I was right, I have my bases covered and was at least entitled to the quote for the year but that it would be going through the insurance ombudsman and not court. He also mentioned that I may be able to claim some form of compensation but I don't think I will

Got another call this evening from another Supervisor to tell me they still couldn't find my phone call (I have a feeling they're giving up looking), this after giving them TO THE MINUTE exact times that I called!!!!

If it goes any further I have the proof that I made the calls, they don't have any record which is a big plus for me.

At one stage they got offended when I told them that there system was flawed:

Me:Your system is flawed
Them:Excuse me no it is not!
Me:Yes it is, you don't send out written confirmations
Them:Thats because we record ALL of our calls!!
Me:THEN WHERE ARE THE RECORDINGS???!!!!

I know they're just following procedure but it just gets so frustrating

Next Step is to put something together for the Ombudsman

To be continued....

ps thanks for all the help so far will be chasing up XS direct me thinks;)

mike65

Me tears hair out (whats left) and I'm not the aggreived party. There's proberly a lesson in this, if it sounds cheap enough to make you go 'yipee!'
then its proberly wrong. That and tape every coversation with an insurance company.

Mike.

natnif

ok, I used to work for this company so what happens is this: they must have your phone call....the only problem is that if you don't know who you spoke to on the phonecall you were told your RENEWAL would be €2500, they still prob have over 100 calls to check for that 1 min time frame. it takes a day or two.

rates change every month, so you CANNOT be given a figure for renewal if you have more than a month left on your current policy.it's fairly unlikely that someone would say that your renewal price was €2500, I'd imagine the wording would have been something like "additional until renewal will be €2500"

IF they did say the wrong thing they HAVE to give you that price for the year, but after that year you are kinda screwed. Most insurance companies won't take that car as new business, so you would have to insure a different car and take a gamble on what the difference would be.

-if it was €2500 additional it sounds like you have roughly 4-5 months left on your policy which means your renewal would be about.....€8500?!!!I could be wrong on that,depending on how long is left to run on this years policy

unkel

Turlock wrote:

If it goes any further I have the proof that I made the calls, they don't have any record which is a big plus for me

Turlock wrote:

Them:Thats because we record ALL of our calls!!

That is indeed promising. They clearly state they record all calls and you can prove you made the calls. Perhaps it's just taking them time to find the recordings

Keep us informed!

Our man in Havana

I doubt the recordings exist. I had a problem one time with Quinn Direct and I challenged them to produce the tape, they admitted that there were no tapes.

seamus

Bond-007 wrote:

I doubt the recordings exist. I had a problem one time with Quinn Direct and I challenged them to produce the tape, they admitted that there were no tapes.

It seems to be common enough across the water too. A girl I know in the UK was involved in a crash. Not her fault, but when she presented her insurance details, it turned out she wasn't insured at all. Her boyfriend had rang the insurance company twice to confirm that she had been, but when the renewal came through, her name wasn't on it. He assumed she was covered.

So in court, she said that she never knew because she trusted him 100% that everything was sorted, and the insurance company were asked to produce the tapes. They had a log that the call had taken place, but the recordings had been "lost", and the case was thrown out.

I'd say half of the time they claim to record, but only record the odd call, or erase the tapes and reuse them after a week or so.