I am absolutely fuming with our so called preferred club Insurer-Footman James. We have insured our MX5 with the club Insurer since we joined 6 years ago, firstly with Aon, then to Footman James. Now been transferred to Equity Direct with no letter from Footman James explaining why. It appears our present MX5, a 2004 Euphonic, is not Classic enough for them so they farmed us out to some unknown insurer. However, for the sake of continuity and ease we went with the new insurer and paid the deposit. Now they want extra money for undisclosed claims? We rang them up and they said we had a claim in 2009. No such claim was made, other than on a different car with a different insurer, apparently we should inform our insurers of any claims on other vehicles with different insurers.
So we are now in a position where we cant cancel due to the high cancellation fee, we have an insurance policy which is inferior to the one we agreed with Footman James and we have a much higher premium which we cant get out of, this situation is a total disgrace and I would recommend ALL members with Footman James to cancel out of principal, I am an Area Coordinator with the MX5 Club and I will never recommend our current club insurer, we need to look elsewhere and quickly as we are clearly not wanted by them, they just want to cherry pick the most lucrative policies to maximise their profits without giving a damn about our members.
Personally I have never insured with them as they are always overpriced. I have found countless deals on my MK1 1.8S with plenty of normal insurers, even for Fully Comp and business use with 20k per year mileage.
I’m not convinced that what they did there is entirely legal.
You had a contract with Footman James. They are entitled to sell/transfer that contract, but if that is detrimental to you by more than 10% in cost, or by removing features that were in the original contract, you must be offered a free get-out.
It’s unusual to transfer a policy part way through the insured term, it sounds more like they decided not to renew yours (due to their underwriting criteria changing) and passed the renewal information to a third-party (from whom they almost certainly would get commission). There is no obligation to use this third-party at renewal time of course.
I suspect all insurers would expect you to inform them of any accidents or claims on any motor policy, certainly at renewal time so that they are basing their premium calculation on up to date information. Since claims get recorded on the CUE database anyway, you might as well.
However not writing a polite letter to you informing you of the policy changes is certainly bad customer service.
So if I’ve got it right, you renewed your insurance without shopping around, previously failed to disclose factual details of your claims history at renewal and it’s someone elses fault you have to stump up extra money.
Good to see we have some friendly and helpful members unlike MXV,anyway, just to clarify, I am 49 years of age but the insurance is in my wifes name as it is her car and she is younger than me so cannot get a quote from Saga where most of the people who have commented have gone. I did look around after the initial confusion because when Equity write to you they start off by thanking you for a quotation, we never asked for one in the first place. I went on some comparison websites but never found a cheaper quote for like to like insurance so decided to go with equity as they had our details already. Having worked within the Insurance industry for the last 27 years, it was never required to state you had been involved in a claim relating to another vehicle with another insurer. When I questioned Equity where exactly it states this on the terms and conditions they couldnt tell me, what a surprise. The whole experience with Equity has been poor, instigated bt Footman James who think they can swap your details over like a market trader, I just want other members to realise exactly what we are dealing with when it comes to the recommended insurer for the club.
Hope this does clarify my position and please dont comment further unless it is constructive, I am no mug so dont treat me like one.
I do a search every year for the best deal for my three cars insurance and the insurers and comparison sites always ask for each drivers claim history. Not their claim history on a particular car.
I find it difficult to believe that in 27 years in the insurance industry, you have not found that out. If you consider me similar to MXV’s posting as unfriendly and unhelpful, then so be it. I have always been asked for each drivers claim history not just the claims on that particular car!
Sorry to say but I think as soon as you paid the deposit you were agreeing to their terms and conditions. And as far as the undisclosed claims goes, all insurers I’ve dealt with do ask about the driver making claims even on other vehicles with other insurers .
I’ll try to be constructive, make sure you have given the insurers of the other vehicles the correct information re: previous claim history, as in the event of you needing to claim they would rightfully be able to refuse payout due to fraudulent information given by yourself.
Standard industry practice for any type of insurance .
Insurer’s are in the risk business, they are looking at the insured as a risk to them. So they want to know about claims that have been
made, but they also want to know about other thing as well, including
circumstances that may have happened but didn’t result in a claim. And
this is your record this will travel with you whichever insurance
company you’re with.
If you don’t disclose all material facts, your insurance could be
invalid and not give protection in the event of a claim. If you knowingly omit these facts it can also be construed as fraud and you can be prosecuted.
Can I join the what the hell is happening bandwagon?
Been insured for I think 11 years with them, went to renew and was told I couldn’t have a Private Car policy anymore, had to be classic.
They put me through to their classic section but when I said I had a roll cage then said they couldn’t cover me even though I’ve had the same cage in the car since 1997, they’ve known about it all that time and it never bothered them before.
They told be to bugger off (well, not in those exact words )
To be fair they put me through to another company, who put me through to another company who put me through to Adrian Flux who covered me for a fair price so it all worked out in the end, but AON used to be great, what the hell happened?
Risky deals and risky bankers is what has happened thats why they are more cautious on risk …best bet is shop around but that is not always an easy option…1
You just have to remember ALL insurance is a rip off, it’s just a case of finding the right rip off for you!
slightly different but insurance bow locks all the same, our main waste drain was cracked about 2m down, to start with the insurance company told us it was our fault as the conservatory was to heavy!
same as, daughters saxo got written off, she was sat in traffic white van man doing at least 20mph drove into the back of her, Diamond paid out full market value which I for one was stunned, but as she bought a corsa we had to change the insurancedetails staying with diamond the quote was a little more but was OK and thought it would be a simple phone call …it was… but 3 days later we recieved a letter from diamond saying that on investigation we had not disclosed the accident and they wanted another £120 for paperwork and non disclosure
after several phone calls ending in this… I demanded to speak to a manager saying basically that we WERE insured with Diamond THEY dealt with the claim THEY paid out and THEY set up the new insurance policy WE were not asked any other questions other than the details of the new car so politely sort it! they then cancelled the old policy THEN wanted to charge us for early cancell I’d carry on with it but you get the picture!
they are ALL chisters and as they say buyer beware!
always compare always tell them what the cheapest quote you have (lie of course!) we played diamond against admiral (same company) for years when the girls were in there teens!
Would have liked to do a deal with Footman James as I hoped that the Owners Club would benefit - my concern is new members who join the owners club thinking they are going to be able to get a good deal on Insurance as suggested - and then have a similar experience - and then subsequently don’t renew their Owners Club Membership at the end of Y1. I don’t think this is good for the club?
Maybe time for a review of provider or at least clarify that this Insurer is only for certain Mx5 models? - sorry to take the topic off track sonewhat and would not have mentioned it had this thread not triggered my response!
I agree Sam90 from experience the “specialised” insurers that latch on to clubs seem to be great for a while then settle back to the usual shinanagans! Personally I have never found these insurers cheaper than standard for bikes or cars unless they are indeed “classic” Perhaps the club can get an official statement from FJ as to just what the criteria is regarding insurance for MX5
But Aon (?sorry cant remember if that is right) did the same with the FTO club first year great price but thereafter worse than the big ones once the main insurers got over themselves regarding grey imports, I was suprised to hear the imported mx5 were still having trouble.
It took me 2yrs to get the DVLA to accept that not all FTO’s were ralliart (a totally diffrent beast) by default DVLA marked all FTO GPX’s as Ralliart from 1994 when the Ralliart one wasn’t imported till late 1990’s. They even had all the the import paperwork translated to english before the would accept my requests. The main reason for doing it was over emissions the Ralliart came under the new emission laws, the GPX shouldn’t although it was possible to get the GPX’s down to .30% it was damn hard!
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I demanded to speak to a manager saying basically that we WERE insured with Diamond THEY dealt with the claim THEY paid out and THEY set up the new insurance policy WE were not asked any other questions other than the details of the new car so politely sort it! they then cancelled the old policy THEN wanted to charge us for early cancell I’d carry on with it but you get the picture!