Car Insurance -Renewal notice required at least 15 days before renewal date?

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KayKew

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Hello everyone
I wonder if any of you can help me? Today I was stopped at a garda checkpoint and was totally taken aback at being told my insurance was out of date. I was absolutely convinced that I would not have let my insurance lapse and thought I must have simply removed the insurance disc to take down my car registration number or insurance policy number or something like that for e.g. renewing car tax or something. I was told that I would have to produce evidence of insurance at my local garda station. I went home and looked high and low for a current certificate of insurance, but found neither a certificate nor any renewal notices coming up to the renewal date. The only communication I found was an email dated 14/2/17 stating that my insurance had not been renewed at that stage and asking me to contact my insurer. However, my insurance had expired on the 6/2/17. I had phoned the insurance company as soon as I got home to ask if I had renewed my insurance with them, but was told that I hadn't. When I asked if they had sent me out any renewal notices, I was told that they had sent out a notice on the 8/2/17 and on 14/2/17. It only struck me later that those dates were actually after the renewal date. On a citizens information site I noticed that there is a requirement for insurance companies to send out a renewal notice at least 15 days before the renewal date. I intend to phone the insurance company tomorrow to get confirmation of the dates they mentioned yesterday, but am wondering if a lack of provision of adequate notice for renewal of insurance would be taken into account when I am faced with a fine which apparently can be up to €5000 and 5 penalty points. I absolutely genuinely believed I had renewed my insurance whenever it was due, having no memory of not doing so. However, on checking my credit card statements I couldn't find any sign of a payment having been made, so can only assume that I had, inadvertently, let my insurance lapse. I was really upset to discover the level of penalties for which I now seem to be liable, plus an appearance in court - something I have never faced before. Any advice or information would be very welcome. Thank you
 
The first piece of advice is that a huge block of unformatted text like yours won't be attractive to too many readers. Break it into paragraphs to make it easier to read.

Secondly, contact a solicitor to represent you in court as unfortunately, you are facing prosecution IMO. We're not talking hours or days here but weeks of uninsured driving.

Thirdly, whatever the obligations on your insurers to send out renewal notices are, the obligation to ensure your car is insured is yours and yours alone.

Fourthly you must now try to get cover which will not be easy given all the circumstances which you must declare to any prospective insurer. Try your current insurer first and then ring around brokers if that fails. Do not drive your car. I'm surprised you were allowed drive away as Gardai now have the power to seize uninsured vehicles.

I'm sorry I don't have better news.
 
You are making it sound like you never recall receiving the two other notices. Did you move house in the last year?
 
When you got the email on 14th February advising you that you had not renewed your insurance what did you do then? Did you contact them immediately?
 
Unfortunately, you are probably looking at a a fine and an endorsement on your licence (maybe a solicitor could make a case for you in court, but normally these things are black and white). As others have said, you will need to notify your last insurer to attempt to get cover ASAP. If your last insurer won't quote (which they probably won't), you will have to go down the declined cases route (where if you get some declined letters from other insurers you can force them to quote). There are some non standard companies in the market as well that may quote.
 
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Thank you all for your replies. Emeralds, had I seen the email on 14th February I would absolutely have been on to them instantly!! However, I was not aware it had even been sent, let alone read it, until I went searching after this whole episode. I am a relatively infrequent user of emails and have had a lot of difficulty at times getting internet access from home etc. In the past I have always received renewal notices by post, so it would not have occurred to me that a reminder would be sent by email.

The fact of the matter is that I was absolutely unaware that my insurance had lapsed. Of course that does not mean that I am somehow not ultimately responsible for my current predicament.

Consequences: My insurer is refusing to provide cover. I have contacted three other companies who have also refused and are going to send me letters to this effect. These letters will then be passed on to my most recent insurer via my broker. My insurer will then be obliged to provide a quote apparently (as you mentioned Jimbobp), which presumably will be extremely high - don't know if there's any upper limit on what the figure could be.

As I am unable to produce a certificate of insurance for the period from when my insurance lapsed until now, I am most likely then going to be issued with a summons. I will have to go to court for the first time in my life. I could be fined up to €5000, given 5 penalty points and at least in theory, could be put off the road for up to two years apparently.

I have never had a claim on my policy in over 25 years of driving and have kept my car insurance up to date at all times until now. I have 3 penalty points dating from 2014.

There it is.
 
Jimbobp said:
There are some non standard companies in the market as well that may quote.
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I wonder could you give me the names of any of those companies Jimbobp? It might be useful to compare what they are looking for with whatever my most recent insurer is asking for. Thanks
 
Hi Kaykew, We have 4 or 5 non standard motor insurers that we normally approach (all broker based companies) Octane, Kennco, ARB, Patrona, XS direct are the normal ones we approach. Best of luck with it. I would think the most likely outcome is a smaller fine, some penalty points but not a ban. I would look for a solicitor to represent you though if possible.
 
Hi KayKew

Ask the insurance company in writing for a copy of the notification of renewal which they should have sent to you.

If they tell you in writing that they did not send the notice, then I think that the judge might look sympathetically on you.

He should take the following into account as well:

I have never had a claim on my policy in over 25 years of driving and have kept my car insurance up to date at all times until now.
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Take advice from a solicitor by all means. But I think you should represent yourself. Show up. Apologise. Tell the story. The judge will probably believe you. Solicitors are making excuses every day on behalf of chancers. The judge should see that you are not a chancer.

I also think that the insurance company would come under pressure to renew your insurance at a fair price.

I drove around without an NCT for months not realizing that I had missed the date. Fortunately, a friend pointed it out to me, not a Garda.

Brendan
 
Thanks Jimbobp and Brendan. The latest update on my situation is that Quote Devil have told me that no insurer they have contacted will insure me, with the exception of Prestige, who will insure me for €2950, which is over 8 times the amount I paid to renew my insurance with RSA in February 2016 (at that time I paid €355.06). My efforts to get three letters refusing me insurance which would then be sent to RSA to oblige them to give me a quote of some kind have so far produced two letters, one of which stated that the insurance company in question was refusing me insurance due to my 'previous convictions'. I phoned them to point out the fact that I have never, to date, been convicted of anything. The person I spoke to seemed rather uncertain as to what the term 'convicted' actually meant, so I did my best to clarify this point for her. In any case, the person I spoke to from Quote Devil was of the opinion that any quote obtained from following the procedure of submitting 3 letters of refusal etc. would be in the region of €5000 to €10,000. It is all quite an eye opener, and despite the fact that I absolutely accept that I should not have let my insurance lapse, that it was my responsibility to know when it was due for renewal etc. the consequences of my unfortunate oversight do seem pretty harsh.

I will ask RSA to send me copies of any renewal notices they say they sent out to me as you suggest Brendan, and will, I think, also get advice from a solicitor. I will also try contacting the non standard insurers you mentioned in your post Jimbobp and once again thanks to you both and to others for advice offered.
 
I have now discovered that contrary to the impression I was given by my broker, they did not in fact send me any renewal notice by post. This only became clear when, as Brendan suggested, I phoned to ask them to send out copies of all renewal notices they had sent to me. They now say they sent me a single email, one month before the renewal date, but I have not found any sign of this email at all. As mentioned before, they sent me an email a week after the renewal date which I had missed, but found after being stopped at the checkpoint. Interestingly, a couple of emails I was sent in the last week or so by other insurance companies I contacted ended up in the Junk mail box labelled as spam and due for automatic deletion. I would not have spotted them were it not for the fact that I went looking for the email my brokers say they sent a month before the renewal date. What happened to the renewal notice email I was sent, if it was sent at all, I have no idea.

I have now paid €2950 to get my car insured with Prestige through Quote Devil. I am not at all happy with the fact that in the course of many conversations with my original broker, they at no time indicated that nothing had actually been sent in the post. They could not but have known that I understood them to be referring to a renewal notice sent by post, as I spent some time explaining to them that I had searched all over the house for it and I repeated my home address to make sure they had sent the renewal notice to the correct address etc.. I really was mystified as to how a renewal notice could have arrived in the post but I had absolutely no memory of having seen it, and could find no sign of it anywhere.

In the course of contacting other insurance companies, I made reference to a renewal notice having been sent by post, but that I simply couldn't find it anywhere, and in the case of Chill Insurance, I was told that their efforts to get a quote from Kennco had been unsuccessful, at least in part because Kennco simply weren't prepared to believe that someone could not have known that their insurance was due for renewal for eight weeks after the renewal date. In other words, Kennco thought I must be lying to Chill Insurance. The Chill Insurance person suggested that Kennco would be assuming that my broker, like Chill Insurance, would have sent out a number of reminders coming up to the renewal date.

In all the years I have been driving I have always received renewal notices by post and have always renewed my insurance in time. I think it is quite reasonable to maintain that had I been posted out a renewal notice this year, I would, once again, have remembered to renew my car insurance before it expired. Maybe the judge will take this into account when I make my appearance in court in a few months time. However, I expect that it will be a very long time before my car insurance returns to a premium of €355 per year!
 
The latest development in my situation is that I contacted Microsoft Technical Support via their 'Chat' facility and it was clearly established by the technician involved that NO email was received by me from my insurance broker on the date on which they claim to have sent me my renewal notice. All the technician could suggest is that if it was sent, it must have 'bounced' or gone somewhere else! If it had bounced I would have assumed the broker would have been made aware of this, but don't have expertise in this area.

This confirms what I had believed to be the case myself all along, as I could not find any sign at all of the email they said they had sent. In one of my many conversations with staff members at the brokers office, it was mentioned to me that they had experienced problems sending emails to Hotmail accounts (which is the type of email address I have). This only came to light I think, because the person I spoke to thought I was just phoning in relation to not having received a No Claims Bonus letter, which I required for getting my car insured with a different insurance company through a different broker at that stage. He seemed to be hoping I might have another email address that he could send it to, due to apparently assuming that there must have been a problem sending it to me the first time, due to my Hotmail account.

So basically, it now appears that I did not in fact receive any renewal notice at all in advance of the expiry date on my car insurance. I am now going to speak to the Citizens Information Service and more than likely the Financial Services Ombudsman to try to establish what difference this may make to the situation. Of course it doesn't change the fact that I was driving without insurance, but hopefully it provides significant support for the fact that I did not realize I had not renewed my insurance as usual. If there is a legal requirement for insurance companies to provide a renewal notice at least 15 days prior to the renewal date, I presume there is some consequence for them if they fail to do this. If they knew they had a problem with Hotmail accounts, surely they should not have relied on an email to my Hotmail account as the sole means of telling me my insurance was due for renewal, even if I had requested to be contacted only by email, which I have never accepted was the case.

I suppose after over two decades of receiving renewal notices in the post, I had come to rely on receiving a renewal notice to alert me to the fact that my car insurance was coming up to the renewal date. So when stopped at the Garda checkpoint, I knew that there was nothing 'pending' on this matter in my head, as there would be if I had received a renewal notice and realized it needed to be paid. I therefore assumed I must have received renewal notice, must have paid it and then 'cleared' it from the 'jobs to be done' part of my brain!

If any of you know what, if any implications there are for an insurance company if a customer does not receive any renewal notice from them prior to the renewal date, I would be interested to hear from you! Meanwhile, I will be interested to hear what advice the Citizens Information Service can give me.
 
KayKew said:
it was mentioned to me that they had experienced problems sending emails to Hotmail accounts (which is the type of email address I have).
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There have been ongoing issues over the past few years with sending email to Hotmail accounts. (Example of a thread on the issue) Microsoft's inbound spam filters have had a high rate of false positives, which results in them blocking legitimate emails. In such cases, these emails will be blocked on entry, so Microsoft technicians would be unable to confirm their existence. Also, Microsoft do not issue bounce notices for such emails as is common with mail designated as spam, so the sender has no way to know there was a problem.

In short, just because MS can't find trace of them does not mean your insurer did not send them. Also, don't use Hotmail for important communications.
 
Time to take some responsibility. Your Insurance disc that was in your windscreen was out for over 2 months and you didn't notice and you're going around the houses looking for someone to blame. Look in the mirror.
 
I can see why you feel aggrieved by all of this, but ultimately the responsibility to renew your policy resides with you. Chill will have a complaints procedure you will need to follow before escalating to anyone else. I think you will have a strong case if it goes to court, but that might boil down to the judge on the day so I would get some legal advice
 
dereko1969 said:
Time to take some responsibility. Your Insurance disc that was in your windscreen was out for over 2 months and you didn't notice and you're going around the houses looking for someone to blame. Look in the mirror.
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Jimbobp said:
I can see why you feel aggrieved by all of this, but ultimately the responsibility to renew your policy resides with you.
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KayKew said:
The fact of the matter is that I was absolutely unaware that my insurance had lapsed. Of course that does not mean that I am somehow not ultimately responsible for my current predicament.
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KayKew said:
It is all quite an eye opener, and despite the fact that I absolutely accept that I should not have let my insurance lapse, that it was my responsibility to know when it was due for renewal etc. the consequences of my unfortunate oversight do seem pretty harsh.
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Thank you dereko and jimbobp for your responses. However, as you will see from the quotes I have included above from earlier entries by me on this thread, I have made it quite clear that I accept that keeping my car insured is ultimately my responsibility.

I would like to say that I very much appreciate that almost all contributors to this thread have remained completely civil and have contributed constructive comments and would like to acknowledge all those contributions. Dereko, might I suggest that while I go look in the mirror, you might take the time to read back over all the information/contributions contained in a thread such as this before passing judgement on the motives of someone else!

I have been working on the assumption that if someone breaks the law, it is of some interest, at least in a court situation, as to how this might have happened.
 
You seem to be going through a broker, unsure if its quote devil or chill.
1. Does the insurance company bypass the broker & write to you directly? Is your premium payable to quotedevil, chill or RSA?
2. When did you take out policy? was it online & was there a default option to receive all notifications by email?

If you went with the online quotedevil/chill in 2016 & bought online, I'd be almost 100% sure the default option is all letters via email.
 
Jimbobp said:
I can see why you feel aggrieved by all of this, but ultimately the responsibility to renew your policy resides with you. Chill will have a complaints procedure you will need to follow before escalating to anyone else. I think you will have a strong case if it goes to court, but that might boil down to the judge on the day so I would get some legal advice
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I agree with the above the fact its ultimately your responsibility to renew your policy. I think nearly anyone who drives will tell you they know the month there insurance is up for renewal. The fact you were driving for nearly two months without realising this is worrying. Your regularly suppose to check over your car to make sure its fit to be on the road. That tyres, lights, tax, insurance etc.

Think it will be lesson learned keep note of your renewal date or check over your car more often. The fact you did get e-mails about your renewal even a week or two after it was out and still didn't renew your policy wont help you in court either.

Fingers crossed you get a lenient judge and only end up with a hefty insurance policy for a few years.
 
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