One of the great social disasters of recent years is that service industries have discovered that providing a good service is not profitable, but tricking customers is. Always within the law, of course, but.
Today for complicated reasons I had to stop automatic renewal of a car insurance policy that I didn’t realise was on auto-renewal. There was no way to do this through the insurance company’s website. After much time in a phone queue I finally got to talk to someone, who promised me that the renewal would be cancelled. However, she also told me that it was their policy not to send out confirmations of renewal cancellations. That means that I have no proof that I cancelled the renewal (only proof that a phone call was made). My apologies for being suspicious, but I am writing this public blog post to explain what took place.
Endsleigh, this is for you. I’m sure that what you are doing is strictly within the law, but that means we need better regulation of your industry.
And I have read this on the date it was posted if verification is ever needed
Thank you!
Wow.
This particular type of scam, the auto-renewal pressure, is in fact why I never authorize automatic withdrawals — if they have to send me a bill and I have to send a check, it prevents automatic renewal as I can simply refuse to pay the bill, and they tend to not continue insurance when it hasn’t been paid for. Companies are trying harder and harder to get people to let them extract money directly from bank accounts without writing a check though.
I’m pretty sure that I did not sign up for auto-renewal. I am certain that I did not authorise a direct debit. My guess is that they were hoping I would just approve it without thinking. They may end up billing me anyway and sending me threatening messages about non-payment. We’ll see.