A tale of confusion with my policy renewal...

...Well I was confused.

I write this as a 'heads up' if you happen to have insurance with Flux. And I hope Dan picks it up as a way to improve their service. I don't wish this to come across as a complaint 'cos it's at least partly my fault...

First of all, the positive bit.
I finally got a few minutes to call Flux this morning and the girl / lady on the other end was a total star. Quick, efficient, pleasant, everything a grumpy old bloke needs when he's got a problem.

So here's what happened.
Flux like to do things through their "My Adrian Flux" web portal. If you want a policy book you download it. Now the idea of not having paperwork makes me uncomfortable but there you go. I'm still miffed that I don't get a proper MOT certificate and a tax disk for my money.

About halfway through the year the email address I'd signed up with died. So I swear I logged on to Flux and changed it but for some reason it didn't change. That meant I never got the renewal notice.
When I realised about a week before renewal I logged on again and changed the address again. I emailed Flux explaining what had happened and asking them to email the documents out again. I heard nothing.

Point 1 for Dan, You could be a little better replying to emails...

So I emailed again (I was busy in France at the time so calling wasn't really an option). This time I got a reply saying that the documents had been emailed but still no documents.
It seems that if you change your email address on their web site it only changes your login email - not the one on the bloody policy! So they were still sending it to the wrong place.

Point 2 for Dan, The fact that both email addresses don't change could be made clearer. And possibly the person reading my first contact might have changed the email on the policy for me.

So the insurance lapsed and the car came off the road. To be honest I'm swamped at the moment and the idea of driving it is a pipe dream so it didn't really matter.

I've seen some odd stuff via their web site over the period too. At one point it said I was a mechanical engineer (I'm not and it's now been changed) but I can't find where I saw that. It's as if it presents different information each time you log on.
At one point it said I had 2 policies and I'm sure one was with the old email and the other with the new one. But now there is only one policy and it had the wrong address... (Also now fixed. I hope.)

Point 3 for Dan, The info presented on your web site could be more consistent. I wish I had screen grabs I could send to you but sadly I don't. I'm guessing it gets a bit confused around the renewal dates which is exactly when you need it to be accurate.

Eventually my missus was checking the credit card statements and noticed a payment to Flux. It had actually auto renewed. And this morning I finally found a few minutes to call and check. So everything is now sorted thanks to the nice lady at the call centre.

I suppose the last point for Dan is this, If you are going to have a policy of not issuing paper documents you need to be considerably tighter with emails and the online service. If you'd have posted documents I'd have known 2 weeks ago that the car was insured. But the web site was just confusing a lot of the time - at least it confused me. And you've got to understand that email is a terrible way of communicating with people. It's really not reliable these days. Fine if that's how you want to work but I feel you need a backup way of communicating with people if it looks like the email failed.


Lastly, I expect there'll be a few "they are crap, try these people" comments, well one day I probably will and I really should trawl this site to see who people recommend. But I'd like to say again, the reason this went wrong is partly my fault in that I didn't double check that the changes I thought I'd made had actually happened. And the reason it took 2 weeks to sort out is because I simply haven't had the time to pick up the phone and call them.

Best regards to you all! (End of moaning post!)
James

I agree James, I have had issue with the web port 'My Adrian Flux' and the time it takes for them to get back to you via email is not very good.

My online policy was lost for some reason unknown to me and when I phoned up they could not find my policy under my surname, address or telephone number. I omitted Alexander ***** as I call myself Alex and they then suddenly found my information. I too was not very happy with this side of the service they provide.

But the price of my premium, sorting out the new cost of the conversion and the help I received over the phone was all excellent. I can put up with paperwork issues vs the cost of my premium, compared to other companies who wanted at least £400. They also didn't charge me any fees for adding modifications to the policy.

Email can be a problem if you chop and change a bit like mobile telephone numbers. I have had the same mobile number since 1993 (well the code changed from 08 to 07 but the main bit is the same), I have many email addresses but I have one catch all address and I redirect everything to it, I do this by having my own domain which is hosted by 1&1 and allows me to redirect everything to it. I highly recommend that you register a domain and then you can have an email address for life James. My email address is basically my name so even though I am old even I can remember it :D
The cost is only a few pounds every year but it makes life easy.

I must say I'm glad it's not just me confused. My renewal is less than a month away and I've heard nothing from them about starting another year. Can't find anything online.

Glad you sorted it James

Yer see, when I write that some piece of online technology didn't do what I thought it should, or it frustrated me, or was otherwise a bit pants I always worry that it's really totally obvious and I'm finally too old and dumb to be allowed to own a computer. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who has problems.
Facebollox is the worst. But, thankfully, I have no friends so have no need for social media.

On the subject of email addresses...
The one that died was a BT account that should have died years ago when we left BT. It lived on for about another 15 years and ironically died 6 months after we went back to BT. I just used it for signing up to things that were likely to send me junk mail knowing full well that when it went I wouldn't care.
The one I now use is linked to my own domain name so is totally under my control as suggested. It's the way forward!

James

Oh, another thing if Dan gets this far down...
The car is on a limited millage policy but the insurers (AXA) don't seem to want to know what the millage is now. Bit odd...
So just by way of dated proof that I can point somebody at in the future... the old girl currently has 128142 miles on it. And, judging by the state of the car, every one was driven flat out!

Actually, now I think of it I could just edit the millage in future so this was pointless. Oh well. :p

Hi,
Thanks for the feedback. I will certainly pass it on to the relevant people. We're always looking for ways to improve and streamline our processes. With regards to the limited mileage issue if you'd be so kind as to PM me your policy details I can double check this for you.
Regards,
Dan.