...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