Auto-Renewal

I’ve had my VW Golf for 3 years now. I realised this a few weeks ago as my breakdown cover with the AA had come up for renewal. I’ve been perfectly happy with the AA as a breakdown service (and we effectively have this on our other car via the Toyota cover) but what I wasn’t particularly happy about was my renewal premium which was almost double what I paid last year. I would have been quite happy to let this lapse and go elsewhere but unfortunately I had forgotten to tick the “no auto-renewal” option on the form when I took it out last year.

Auto-renewal is a world of pain as it then involves a call to customer services to cancel it. The AA’s customer service number is actually a Freephone number and I think they should be given some real credit for that as I have had to deal with companies (I’ll not name names but let’s call them “Shysters”) who use premium phone numbers to effectively hold the unwitting customer hostage. However, when I did get through to their customer services I had to endure a full 15 minutes brow beating until I could convince the phone operator to cancel my damn policy (in fact, if they had offered the same deal as last year without the auto-renewal I would have taken it, so it’s their loss).

I’d rather not bother with Auto-Renewal at all but some firms do not give the option of an opt-out. In such cases I do have to weigh up whether the offer is good enough and, more importantly, whether the company is reputable enough before going ahead. In fact, auto-renewal and continuous payment agreements in general do have their uses but I suspect their popularity amongst some firms is to rely on customer inertia to hike up payments on an annual basis. This seems to be particularly relevant in the insurance industry which also seem to be the ones who fail to offer, or at best hide, the opt outs.

I think there should be better regulation of auto-renewals and, where they are offered, the ability to opt-out should be mandatory and the option to cancel them (and the associated contract) should be at least as easy as it is to make it in the first place whether this is online, on the phone, via mail or in person.

So what am I doing for breakdown cover now? Well a friend of mine (who also writes this light hearted motoring blog) recommended a firm called Start Rescue (www.startrescue.co.uk) which I have never heard of before. Any breakdown service is only as good as their callout but he has used them twice to recover his Jaguar and was perfectly happy with them so I am hoping that something as dull and mainstream as my Golf will be no problem. I’ve taken out the policy and they do not force the customer to take out auto-renewal by default. They cost less than half of the increase in my old AA policy. They also offer better cover than my old AA policy (I can now break down at home). They are also one of the very few firms to have their breakdown app available for Windows phones so, if necessary, I could call them out from my works’ Nokia phone. Hopefully I won’t have to contact them until renewal time next year but so far I’m quite happy with the deal.