FINED £700 DUE TO CALLING 3 DAYS LATE RE BLACK BOX!!!!
1
Carrot committed Daylight Robbery when they cancelled my 19 year old sons Insurance Policy and retained £700 of our £1800 Premium for doing so!
“Why?” you may ask?! Because he was convicted for dangerous driving? Because he hid driving convictions from Carrot when taking out his first ever policy with them? Because he had criminal convictions?........
No no no…..none of the above – but because he was 3 days late phoning Carrot to arrange installation of his Telematics box. Yes you didn’t read that wrong – Carrot took £700 of his money because he was 3 days late in phoning them to arrange fitting of his Black Box.
My son has recently passed his test and as a family we made savings to enable him to have his first car and as with any other first time driver we had to make savings in order to pay for the costly first time driver insurance policy. He took ownership of this process and after finding a policy with Carrot he took control of administering that policy and of organising the fitting of the Black Box. In the midst of this he celebrated his 19th Birthday and went away for a week. As a result he was 3 days late calling to arrange the fitting.
Do not forget that this was his first time of going through this process – he was learning as he went along. And he made a small mistake. A mistake that he readily admits to and is willing to accept the consequences of.
BUT for that simple mistake they have kept £700 of his money – a few points I would like to make here:
We had paid for the policy in one lump sum – and that payment was taken immediately. They are now taking 5 days to refund the rest of the money.
If we had decided to pay our premium in monthly instalments then they would not have been able to keep £700 of our money – but in this case our money was sitting in their coffers and they decided to keep £700 of it. Where is the sense in the rationale that they have used?! There isn’t any.
They retained 35% of the premium – this is their structured penalty system – so if our premium had been £300 they would only have retained circa £100 – again where is the sense in this rationale? How can this be fair and ethical?
And of course we needed insurance for his car immediately so we had to pay out £1800 again to make sure he was covered – and they took our money very willingly again – despite inflicting such a hefty “fine” on him of £700!
Has anyone else out there experienced Carrot committing Daylight Robbery?
Courts hand out smaller fines for people breaking the law, inflicting damage on property, risking peoples lives with their behaviour – my son was 3 days late making a phone call.
What is the fine inflicted for driving without insurance…£100? £200? £300?............. but my son has been “fined” £700 by Carrot for trying to ensure he was following the law and driving legally.
We will be following this up with the industry ombudsman and taking this matter as far as we can take it as we cannot accept that this is a fair and decent way for a business to operate – it is ethically and morally wrong.
Reviewed on: 3rd November 2018
