My family and I recently moved home, the new house is a new build on a new development. Nice though having a new house has been, there have been one or two unexpected and unappreciated challenges. The most recent and intensely frustrating problem connected to car insurance prompted this exasperated blog.
With regards to her car insurance, Mrs Baldwin dutifully informed Hastings Direct of our new address when the move took place. Though that was earlier this year, this week saw her car insurance cancelled because the insurance company couldn’t cope with the new postcode (probably to do with being able to create a risk profile).
Postcode issues have of course popped up all over the place and resulted in me and Mrs B. needing to input addresses manually on a variety of service providers’ websites because the postcode lookup functionality failed. The issues haven’t affected our banking or our ability to secure house insurance, get on the voters’ roll, buy train tickets, sort out rubbish collections etc. but Hastings and indeed the car insurance aggregator sites haven’t been able to cope at all.
So on Tuesday, we were in the ridiculous situation that we had a mortgage, mail redirection, house insurance and life assurance and yet Hastings Direct couldn’t insure the cars on the drive. Mrs B. had to ring around a variety of insurance businesses (instead of rely on the usual websites) to find a new policy. Thankfully Esure was able to help.
The new policy enabled Mrs B. to continue to drive her car but in having to arrange it, she has lost six months of additionally accrued no claims and has had to fork out for a new policy before getting a refund from Hastings for the six-month period that it now won’t cover.
Our new home is in a Northamptonshire village that has been established for hundreds of years, our estate is a short distance from the A428 and the drive we live on is just off the main road through the village. How hard would it have been to base an insurance quote on the risk profile of the houses just across the road?
The service from Hastings was shit and we will never deal with the company again. The computer said ‘no’ and the client services staff, though apologetic were powerless as a result. Mrs B. was livid and I was cross enough to take to my keyboard. We will of course raise a formal complaint but fully anticipate that will achieve nothing.
In our technology enabled world, where our new home is visible from space and where new houses are being built all over the place (there are dozens of new developments in Northamptonshire alone), it is ridiculous that something as straightforward as car insurance becomes a problem.
And we can’t be alone in experiencing these kinds of challenges.
With regards to property, if you are buying new – beware!
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With regards to her car insurance, Mrs Baldwin dutifully informed Hastings Direct of our new address when the move took place. Though that was earlier this year, this week saw her car insurance cancelled because the insurance company couldn’t cope with the new postcode (probably to do with being able to create a risk profile).
Postcode issues have of course popped up all over the place and resulted in me and Mrs B. needing to input addresses manually on a variety of service providers’ websites because the postcode lookup functionality failed. The issues haven’t affected our banking or our ability to secure house insurance, get on the voters’ roll, buy train tickets, sort out rubbish collections etc. but Hastings and indeed the car insurance aggregator sites haven’t been able to cope at all.
So on Tuesday, we were in the ridiculous situation that we had a mortgage, mail redirection, house insurance and life assurance and yet Hastings Direct couldn’t insure the cars on the drive. Mrs B. had to ring around a variety of insurance businesses (instead of rely on the usual websites) to find a new policy. Thankfully Esure was able to help.
The new policy enabled Mrs B. to continue to drive her car but in having to arrange it, she has lost six months of additionally accrued no claims and has had to fork out for a new policy before getting a refund from Hastings for the six-month period that it now won’t cover.
Our new home is in a Northamptonshire village that has been established for hundreds of years, our estate is a short distance from the A428 and the drive we live on is just off the main road through the village. How hard would it have been to base an insurance quote on the risk profile of the houses just across the road?
The service from Hastings was shit and we will never deal with the company again. The computer said ‘no’ and the client services staff, though apologetic were powerless as a result. Mrs B. was livid and I was cross enough to take to my keyboard. We will of course raise a formal complaint but fully anticipate that will achieve nothing.
In our technology enabled world, where our new home is visible from space and where new houses are being built all over the place (there are dozens of new developments in Northamptonshire alone), it is ridiculous that something as straightforward as car insurance becomes a problem.
And we can’t be alone in experiencing these kinds of challenges.
With regards to property, if you are buying new – beware!
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