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“WORST Insurer I've ever dealt with. Makes joke of JL...”

written by on 18/07/2013

John Lewis Car insurance was rubbish from the get go ! At first my policy was started on the WRONG DATE, from here I rang them up to point this out, and they agreed they had made a mistake and changed it. On receipt of the 'amended' policy, they had AGAIN put a wrong date in ! I rang them again and was informed that my policy would need to be cancelled (even though it had not started yet) so that they could start a new one with the correct policy start date. AGAIN, I sat on the phone for over 20 minutes confirming all my details and eventually we were happy the policy was right, with the correct start date etc... All seemed fine until 2 weeks later I get a letter through from JL informing me that 'We are sad to see you go' and cancel your policy with us. It turns out the person at JL had created a new policy and deleted (cancelled) that SAME policy, leaving the incorrect one still on there with the wrong date. Bottom line - I was driving totally uninsured for 2 weeks, and doing over 100 miles a day there was a high chance my car would have been checked and crushed/had point on my license/driving ban. But at no point for 2 weeks did anybody inform me of this. AGAIN I rang up and was seriously upset about what they had done and after having played back my conversation with them, they realised they had made mistake and suggested I start another policy that day with them. (please note that by this time I'd already paid for my insurance and lots of phone calls), so I went ahead with their suggestion as I had to get in my car ASAP and drive somewhere else. They first tried telling me that the premium had gone up since the previous quote that they cancelled for no reason. Only after I'd flat-out refused (repeatedly) to pay anymore money as it was THEIR mistake and that THEY had cancelled my policy were they prepared to set my premium to what I'd already agreed to and paid on my policy. They offered me no compensation for the fact their negligence could have cost me my car, my license and my lively hood ! And said I should be grateful that they were letting me off the 'extra-premium' on the policy.

I didn't need anything else from them for months, but eventually changed my car and wanted to add my wife to the policy. AGAIN JL made a mistake when changing the car details. But the WORST was still to come, I asked the lady on the phone approx. 5 times to confirm if my wife would be covered (I kept asking as I never felt she was really listening to me but rather trying to work her way through her 'spiel'). Once the Spiel over, she took payment for adding my wife to the policy (£85) and confirmed that there would be no further payments on the policy until its end. Just before hanging up the phone, I again jokingly asked "just to be 100% positive, my wife can definitely drive this car now right ?", and the women responded that my wife would definitely drive this car as long as she had her OWN insurance policy covering her. (I mean W-T-F) Why did they take the £85, and to make it worse the following month they took another £60'odd out as a 'FINAL payment' which again was not explained and in fact was told quite clearly that after the £85 charge there would be NOTHING left to pay on the account.

To Sum it up, they don't listen, they make lots of mistakes (ones that can get your car crushed, get you points on your license or worse a driving ban, which for some people means an end of employment. What's worse is that other than saying, "oh yeah, we've made a mistake" and giggle a bit, followed by a lame excuse for an apology they don't do anything to try to solve it or make it up to the customer. They charged me about £150 too much for which I have still not received an adequate answer and which I will taking to small claims if I don't get somewhere with it soon.

I will NEVER use JL insurance again, and as a loyal JL customer for many years now and spending thousands every year with JL, I am surprised that JL would have such a useless bunch of monkeys flying the JL insurance flag. STAY WELL CLEAR !!!!