Kwik Fit and the mystery of the Insurance renewal "error"!

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On Wednesday my Car Insurance renewal arrived from Kwik Fit. I opened the envelope and nearly fell over after reading the quote for this years premium on the Scirocco.....£606!.

Now I realise that to some people a quote of £606 would appear to be not too bad a deal, after all I recently heard of a company quoting £3100 for a 17 year old to insure a 1 litre Nissan Micra!, and admittedly that would have been a shock.

So why then was I not impressed with the renewal quote? Well it's probably due to the fact that although I have now got one more years no claims, still have no convictions,I am another year older (and don't I know it!) and the car has no performance modifications (you can't really class charity graphics and a tow bar as "performance" enhancing!), the cost had gone up by almost £175 from the January 2009 premium.

Intrigued as to the reason for this increase , and the fact that the renewal also did not include several extras (10% discount on purchases at Kwik Fit,Free MOT,Breakdown recovery etc), I decided to log onto the Go Compare website to see if I could get a better deal.

I specified all of the requirements as per the renewal notice, in fact I also included Breakdown cover and legal expenses just for a laugh,then,after the rest of the details had been filled in I hit the return button and waited for my quotes.......

Imagine my surprise then when the third lowest quote came from...Kwik Fit Platinum Insurance!......£402 to be precise, that's £202 less than my renewal, and included more benefits!.

To cut a long story short I then called the Kwik Fit renewal line and explained my findings. The result? Well lets just say that after a rather confusing explanation by the phone sales guy, they have now agreed to insure me for £445 for fully comprehensive cover with Breakdown, excess protection and several other "extras" to boot.

The lesson is of course, never assume that your insurers have your best interests in mind, or indeed that they do anything more than churn out a random figure when your premium is due for renewal.

Remember.Never assume, always check!

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Halifax Bank Robbers.Take from the poor to pay the rich !

(.Published Date: 27 February 2010)

"LLOYDS' 6,000-strong army of Halifax staff in Calderdale will all get bonuses worth hundreds of pounds – despite the bank running up a massive £6.3 billion loss.

An employee on £25,000 a year can expect up to £1,000, providing performance targets are met.

The bank is 41 per cent owned by the taxpayer after its takeover of HBOS.

Yet hours after announcing huge losses for the second year in a row, a spokesman revealed rank- and-file staff would be rewarded again this year".

Now,let me tell you a story................

A lady that I know was telling me about a situation that she has found herself in recently involving the Halifax Bank.

She receives about £150 per month in family allowance, and this is paid directly into her Halifax current account.She had a very modest £25 overdraft set up for those times when there is too much month left at the end of the money, and everything was going fine.

Imagine her surprise then when she received a letter from the Halifax bank advising her that because she had exceeded her £25 overdraft by £2.70 (yes, 2 pounds and seventy pence!), they were going to charge her....£5 per day until she took it down to within the pre-arranged figure of £25!. Even after she gets the figure down to £25 she is still going to be charged £1 per day until the overdraft is cleared completely.

Now I understand that the banks are a business, and I also understand that customers are made aware of possible charges, but £5 per day seems a little excessive for a £2.70 "oversight".

The bottom line of this story is that this lady is now facing a £55 bank charge in April....one third of her family allowance is going to be swallowed up by those lovely people at the Halifax.

What makes it more despicable is the fact that this is a company who have recently been bailed out of financial ruin by the humble taxpayers of the UK because THEY could not control their own finances and were responsible in part for the recent melt down of the finances of the country, and now it appears that they have found a very nice way of thanking those same tax payers by slamming them with excessively unfair charges. Also noteworthy is the fact that (by pure coincidence of course!) this is the same bank that is making a big noise about the fact that they will "reward" people who pay in £1000 per month by giving them...yes, you guessed it...£5!.

Surely this is indeed then what could be termed as a "Reverse Robin Hood" policy,taking from the poorer souls in our society and using these ill gotten gains to line the pockets of the better off,not to mention giving their staff generous bonuses!.

"Get a little extra help with the Halifax"...I somehow don't think so.

"If money is the root of all evil,then surely the banks must be the metaphorical "tree" that they are attached too......and they probably have a "branch" near you!"

If you have been affected by the issues raised in this post, please join the Facebook group and tell us your story.Follow this link to join:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4796947231

An article about this story:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/savings-and-banking/bank-charges/article.html?in_article_id=492223&in_page_id=507

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