Automatic renewal of car insurance
When I reach the 30-day period before insurance expires, I begin to research best premium for the coming year. To start, I ask current insurer for the renewal price. This year Admiral raised the premium from £811 approx. To a little over £1100. Challenging it brought it down to £933 - but I said I wasn’t satisfied and would look around. Finding a better premium via Confused.com (lower by over £200), I changed to this new insurer, and took out a policy on 12/11/2020 (current insurance expired 09/12/2020). A little after taking out the new cover, I received an email from Admiral stating a new premium of £933.18. I replied to the email that I had found alternative cover and would not be renewing with them. What I had failed to spot was that it was a “Do not reply” email, although it was not rejected by the Postmaster service.
Casually looking at my bank statement during Boxing Day, I noticed that Admiral had taken £933.18 on 14/12/2020. I am annoyed, not only by my careless oversight of the “do not reply”, but also that Admiral would send a “do not reply” email when they intend to take money from a bank account unless the customer contacts them otherwise. This is poor business practice as a non-serviced email should never be sent in such circumstances. The volume of emails that get received daily (mine can be 50+ when you include spam and promotional ads from previous purchasing outlets), and a “do not reply” instruction can be easily missed.
After clearing the holiday period, Tuesday 29/12 will see me having to chase up Admiral for refund of the £933.18. 
Comments
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Thanks for the replies. Yes, LLM, I thought about that too. When I contact them, I will be pointing out the bad practice of using "do not reply" emails in such instances. Also, that it is unlawful to to hold more than one insurance policy for one vehicle, so my logic is that it isn't possible to apply a cancellation fee for an unlawful policy.
One useful bit of advice from a relative who deals with health insurance: If I get an unsatisfactory reply from the insurer, I can insist that the matter be referred to the Ombudsman, and this creates an automatic £550 charge on the insurer.
Wherevernext - I can do as you suggest as well. I also still have my SENT message in my email file and can supply this as well. However, I do hope that they will treat the matter in a reasonable manner without any need for confrontation. Even winning an argument is less satisfying than mutual recognition of a genuine mistake and rectification to the satisfaction of both parties.
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What we normally do is ring our current insurer a few weeks before renewal, in fact, as soon as the renewal reminder arrives, and tell them we do not want an automatic renewal. If we subsequently decide to renew with them, it's easy enough to ring them back. We did that this year with CAMC, and eventually ended up with SAGA. They in fact asked if we wanted to opt out of automatic renewal, which we did.
IMHO it's sharp practice, this automatic renewal, but of course the argument is that it "stops you from being uninsured".
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Sorry to disappoint it is not unlawful to hold more than one policy. What you cannot legally do is claim on more than one unless each company knows of the existence of the others policy. In which case they will most likely share the pay out. Of course they could also refuse your claim entirely.
Interesting about the ombudsman charge on the insurer. I would check that out carefully.
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An increasing number of companies seem to be using no reply email addresses as they don't want to use email as a form of two way communication. They want you to use online or automated phone services.
Having said that I have just had my car insurance come through from John Lewis and got an email I could reply to and the renewal by post, they don't appear to do auto renewal. Fortunately only went up £12 so renewed by phone.
David
PS somewhat bemused why a car costs nearly £1000 to insure, my motorhome cost less than half that!
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A car to tow a caravan is generally a larger, more powerful car, and when you get to 75+ many insurers load the premiums. Cars also tend to do more miles than MHs.
2 years back our insurer wanted to virtually double the premium for our Touareg to over £800, even shopping around the best we could get was £600 odd with NFU.
Renewal due 1st March, so that will give OH something to do.
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I changed insurers a few weeks back and had the same aggro as the OP. After several exchanges of correspondence, they refunded the full amount having previously charged about £40 for a days worth of insurance!
I've now got a three year fixed premium with Saga so I have a bit of a respite from all that chasing around for quotes.
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Update: After a bit of a tussle with Admiral customer services, I have Now got a full refund of £933.18.
Might be of interest to readers- A relative who works in the insurance industry told me this: Where a rolling contract is employed, the contract is nullified if the renewal is more than the expiring one. If it is challenged, this is called a “counter claim” and, if a lower figure is offered and declined, then that offer is merely a proposal which carries no liability. Even I f you do nothing, the insurer cannot lawfully charge for and continue renewal of the insurance. Following my pointing out this situation, their agent simply said that the offending charge would be refunded. Another thing that needs to be remembered, is that many of these call centre agents are not fully conversant with all aspects of financial regulations, and can be trying in all innocence to apply demands that are not legally binding.
However, lesson learned and I will never be caught in the same argument again.
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My car insurance renewal came from Direct Line. Higher by a bit than last year. Made enquiries and found SAGA £80 cheaper. My Direct Line had an Automatic Renewal note. Had phoned them to query increase and try to renegotiate but with no success, Told the young lasy not to renew but not confident with her reply. Will see on 30/1if premium not taken. Seems anew sneaky way to catch us out this Automatic Renewal" scam.
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It's not new. It's been going on for years.
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I have been aware of this 'auto renewal' for a number of years and either ask for its removal when taking it out or by phoning when I receive the renewal EMail.
What bugged me this year (expires Feb 4th) was the renewal setup £20 fee as I do all the work online myself, so I'm paying them for my time. Although there was a good reduction of the policy from £311.42 last year to £276.36, on phoning the lady said it had always been included but transparency regulations means it is now shown as it is. So auto renewal has been removed but I will stay with them for another year.
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