Telematics (Black Box) car insurance is becoming increasingly popular and is now offered by a number of the major car insurance providers.
I heard an interesting tale from a young gentleman who had arranged telematics insurance some 8 months ago in an endeavour to obtain young person’s car insurance at an affordable premium. His premium started off at £2,000 per annum and was reviewable three monthly.
In fact, after three months, the premium dropped considerably to around £1,600 per annum. After a further three months the premium increased to £1,700 per annum.
Anyway, he informed me that his telematics car insurance had been cancelled by the car insurance provider because the credit card that they had been claiming the premiums from had expired and they did not have the new card details to claim future premiums. He was not aware of this until he received correspondence to this effect.
When contacting the company concerned he was informed that they had notified him of the issue surrounding the card via his dashboard that he claims not to have noticed. He was quite happy to re-start the insurance cover with them but was informed that the policy had been cancelled and he would need to take out a new policy and would loose the 8 months no claims bonus discount that he had accumulated.
The loss of 8 months no claims bonus discount is a significant factor from a financial perspective. He was also told by the insurance company that they would not provide confirmation of him having accumulated this discount so that he could try to take it to another insurance company. Obviously, this has cost him dearly but I thought that it was worth mentioning this situation in the hope that others will not make the same mistake.
So, remember keep an eye on your telematics dashboard. It obviously has a number of uses.