Admiral

If you have a policy with Admiral for your car insurance you may find this helpful. In fact whatever insurance company you are with, this MAY also apply. I am going to tell you about my dad's experience with Admiral. He took out a policy with them last year and it cost him around £350 which was quite reasonable. About three weeks ago he received a letter from them thanking him for renewing his policy and informing him that the amount of £410 was going to be debited from his credit card over the next couple of days. The letter referred to a renewal pack that they apparently sent him a couple of weeks previous - he didn't receive anything of the kind. The first he knew about the premium was from this letter, and he had not given them the authorisation to deduct money from his card. My dad was obviously concerned about this, especially as the premium had gone up quite a bit, when it should in effect go down or remain the same as he has made no claims and has about 8 years no claims
bonus.

I then decided to get online and have a look for cheaper quotes - every insurance company that i tried was cheaper than Admiral. Funnily enough, so was Admiral's own online quote! How weird - you'd think it would be the same premium as that stated in the letter. Not so! The online quote was for £285 or there abouts. A bit of a difference wouldn't you say?

My dad phoned them up and informed them of this and they said that they would look in to it and get back to him. (The excuse they gave him of why the premium had gone up was all down to the government.) They didn't get back to him. When my dad phoned them up again they took all the details again and said they'd look into it - that was a couple of days ago and we
are still waiting to hear from them. Whatever happens they cannot justify charging a premium so much higher than any other insurance company - are they not meant to be one of the cheapest!?!

From our experience of the above, I would now recommend that you double check your renewal premium from any company that you are with - the same thing might have happened to you. I am sure it must have happened to many people who 'trust' these supposedly 'cheaper insurance' companies to provide among the lowest premiums for them especially if they have remained with the same company for over a couple of years.

UPDATE 11th March 2001
Admiral have finally gotten back to us and after many phone calls to them they eventually telephoned my dad on friday and agreed to matching their online quote. And so they should. I now wonder if they will credit his card within the next few months...they seem to delay an awful lot.