by momof3 » Mon Jul 24, 2006 09:15 pm
This story is kind of long and probably not new, but i'll try to make it shorter and painless hoping you'll bare with me....
My husband had a policy with company E thru agent A. Actually there were two policies -1 for rental and 1 for car. A couple of months ago agent A notices us that they were not doing buisness with company E . We contacted agent A and he gave us two choices:
1.go with agent B that took over his buisness
2.or get a new policy with a new agent
He chose option 2 and since we bought a house meantime, we have now 2 policies with agent C -homeowners and car.
Today I got a bill in the mail from agent B.-I guess it got forwarded from the previous adress. a bill for the policy on the rental. that we no longer rent. i contacted company E that sent me to agent B. I contacted agent B and they said my husband has to cancel in writng this policy. He said that since we never contacted agent A (!!! :o ) they took over our policy. I tried to talk to the lady but I was hitting a wall.
now comes my question
-is it legal for agent a to transfer/sell our policy without our agreement.
-is it legal for agent B to claim they have this policy with us since we did not agree to the transferr in the first place.
Can they claim we owe money because we did not cancel this policy before it allegedly started?
My husband had a policy with company E thru agent A. Actually there were two policies -1 for rental and 1 for car. A couple of months ago agent A notices us that they were not doing buisness with company E . We contacted agent A and he gave us two choices:
1.go with agent B that took over his buisness
2.or get a new policy with a new agent
He chose option 2 and since we bought a house meantime, we have now 2 policies with agent C -homeowners and car.
Today I got a bill in the mail from agent B.-I guess it got forwarded from the previous adress. a bill for the policy on the rental. that we no longer rent. i contacted company E that sent me to agent B. I contacted agent B and they said my husband has to cancel in writng this policy. He said that since we never contacted agent A (!!! :o ) they took over our policy. I tried to talk to the lady but I was hitting a wall.
now comes my question
-is it legal for agent a to transfer/sell our policy without our agreement.
-is it legal for agent B to claim they have this policy with us since we did not agree to the transferr in the first place.
Can they claim we owe money because we did not cancel this policy before it allegedly started?
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 12:36 pm Post Subject: Please check out your agreement !
hey there !
This case is of phenomenal interest to me since I'd my self borne the same fate a couple of years back !
I'd sight my example in exactly the same fashion as you've presented it to me. I also got a notice from agent-A and then later on came to know that the operations were transferred to agent-B who in turn did send me a bill for my rental.
When I consulted my attorney friend later on , I got a straight explanation from him stating that the agreement between me and my insurer had nothing to do with the agents/brokers and has no provision for any declaration to be made to the company's consumers in terms of any shift of business relations between the company and its business partners or recognized agents there on.
So, by following this view agent-A had performed his legal task of notifying me, but agent-B was by no means legally bound to notify his new tie up with my insurer. Again it also stands clear that once I got informed of A's extermination of business relations with my insurer, it became my personal responsibility to contact my insurer and verify the state of my policy, which would otherwise be considered as fine with me.
Thus, I believe you should go ahead and thoroughly read the conditions of your agreement with your insurer. If you're not clear please contact your attorney.
Best wishes from my side, fatman
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 10:23 pm Post Subject:
Thanks fatman,
I guess the only difference stands were we have the new contracts with the same insurance. We did notify them of the change, of course...and so did our new agent.
What is funny is that we have 2 insurance policies with the same company for the same car(if we pay both-can we get double the money in case of accident?-just kidding).
So I guess it is legal but for sure is messed up.
Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 02:08 am Post Subject:
Welcome momof3 to the Insurance forum :)
Feel free to discuss or share your experiences.
Thanks.
Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 05:42 am Post Subject: Please negotiate till the end of it !
Hi momof3 !
I truly empathize with you in all that you've explained over here. I'm sure, we all do come across situations in our lives, where sometimes an uncanny expectation seems the only consequence to the most logical chain of events !
Thats why…I have this feeling somewhere deeper in my mind that you should get something in the form of a compensation from the Agent-B as described in your first post. Always remember this world as the best platform to bargain…and over here negotiations might work in your favor if your position gets slightly different than that o' mine !
Take care, Fatman
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