Volvo Owners Club Forum - View Single Post

isbjorn · Jan 22nd, 2013, 13:06

I am afraid it is too late - I have accepted settlement pay out. The regulations etc which bound car ownership, constrain you so much and make it just too complicated that unless you are an expert then it is too difficult to know where you stand in terms of what your rights/options are. Unfortunately I am not very familiar with how the whole insurance scene works. But what has happened here is, apparently, due to intransigence by DVLA over Continuous Insurance Enforcement - my insurers say that DVLA will allow no period of grace time to "sort things out" - once a vehicle looks like being scrapped the insurers are "obliged to remove it from cover". Once they do that, then the registered keeper is breaking the law by having an uninsured vehicle which is not "off the public highway" i.e. SORN'd. So, unless you can be 100% certain of exactly where your car is after it's been taken away by the recovery people for estimation of repair, you are liable to prosecution and so you're obliged to send in the V5 "scrappage" section to DVLA immediately. To cover themselves, the insurers send out letters with "standardised wording" that is phrased so as to comply with DVLA stipulations and said wording makes it abundantly clear of where the registered keeper stands in relation to the law regarding CIE. Later on I received more correspondence saying to the effect that "due to regulations policing the ownership and insurance of vehicles having suffered accident damage, our policy is not to allow buy-backs etc" - blah blah. I suppose it's all to do with preventing cowboys from welding halves of two vehicles together etc. So, as usual these days, MOST of us innocents have to suffer the penalties consequential to the imposition of kneejerk sledgehammer regulations intended to inhibit the mal-goings-on of a tiny minority. Whether all this truly has any foundation, I have no idea and I have so much on my plate at present that I am not inclined to investigate. It has been well promoted in the media that insurers are using CIE to justify automatically debiting accounts to renew premiums, even if the customer has already taken their insurance business elsewhere. I suspect CIE will have a lot more to answer for as time goes by and the (im)practical consequences emerge. I also believe that it is inappropriate that every vehicle has to be insured - it should be every driver has to be insured - parked/rarely driven cars do not cause accidents - drivers cause accidents - those of us who have cars which we rarely drive are paying through the nose for insurance per mile driven - but that's another bee in my bonnet, for another day. But if anyone out there does know more and wants to champion a cause then by all means, be my guest....

Jan 22nd, 2013, 13:06	#27
isbjorn Member Last Online: Jan 30th, 2013 23:48 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Egremont, Cumbria	Continuous Insurance Enforcement (CIE) I am afraid it is too late - I have accepted settlement pay out. The regulations etc which bound car ownership, constrain you so much and make it just too complicated that unless you are an expert then it is too difficult to know where you stand in terms of what your rights/options are. Unfortunately I am not very familiar with how the whole insurance scene works. But what has happened here is, apparently, due to intransigence by DVLA over Continuous Insurance Enforcement - my insurers say that DVLA will allow no period of grace time to "sort things out" - once a vehicle looks like being scrapped the insurers are "obliged to remove it from cover". Once they do that, then the registered keeper is breaking the law by having an uninsured vehicle which is not "off the public highway" i.e. SORN'd. So, unless you can be 100% certain of exactly where your car is after it's been taken away by the recovery people for estimation of repair, you are liable to prosecution and so you're obliged to send in the V5 "scrappage" section to DVLA immediately. To cover themselves, the insurers send out letters with "standardised wording" that is phrased so as to comply with DVLA stipulations and said wording makes it abundantly clear of where the registered keeper stands in relation to the law regarding CIE. Later on I received more correspondence saying to the effect that "due to regulations policing the ownership and insurance of vehicles having suffered accident damage, our policy is not to allow buy-backs etc" - blah blah. I suppose it's all to do with preventing cowboys from welding halves of two vehicles together etc. So, as usual these days, MOST of us innocents have to suffer the penalties consequential to the imposition of kneejerk sledgehammer regulations intended to inhibit the mal-goings-on of a tiny minority. Whether all this truly has any foundation, I have no idea and I have so much on my plate at present that I am not inclined to investigate. It has been well promoted in the media that insurers are using CIE to justify automatically debiting accounts to renew premiums, even if the customer has already taken their insurance business elsewhere. I suspect CIE will have a lot more to answer for as time goes by and the (im)practical consequences emerge. I also believe that it is inappropriate that every vehicle has to be insured - it should be every driver has to be insured - parked/rarely driven cars do not cause accidents - drivers cause accidents - those of us who have cars which we rarely drive are paying through the nose for insurance per mile driven - but that's another bee in my bonnet, for another day. But if anyone out there does know more and wants to champion a cause then by all means, be my guest....