[sarahg49]

I am hoping someone can give me some advice. I was stopped by the police on Friday evening for which I had no idea why. We recently brought a new car and transferred the insurance over from our old car to the new one. Much to my surprise, the police told me that the car had no insurance. I could prove that payments were going out of my account to the insurance and upon closer inspection of my document, RG02 was down as PG02. I have been given a producer from the police but am not getting anywhere with the insurance company. They have updated the certificate with the correct Licence plate number with no quibble, but will not give me a letter to say that I was covered at the time I was stopped. All the other details are correct. What is even more frustrating is the number plate that is on my documents doesn't even exist so I am not sure how they even managed to get the correct details. They never said "Are you sure that is right? That plate isn't coming up on our system" I have checked DVLA and even gone through their website to get a new quote using the reg plate on our documents, and even their own site says it doesn't exist. What is even more confusing is we had to tax the car before we could drive it (it was an import) and we were able to that. How was that possible if I didn't have any insurance? I am with General Accident who do not have a call center so I can only communicate with them via email which is infuriating as I just want to speak to a human being! Has anyone had a simialr problem and is there anything I can do? I really do not want 6 points on my licence for something that was in place but just had a typo error.
Thanks

[smudger]

I had a similar thing when I bought a private reg. plate, I had put two letters the wrong way round? ......................It was the insurance company who spotted it, after I got all the paper work back from the DVLA. ........................The insurance company changed it over for me and sent a new certificate of insurance. .................They told that if I had been stopped by plod, that I would still have been covered, as all the rest of the paper work was correct.

[dacouch]

It's not that an unusual situation, generally assuming the vehicle the reg number you supplied the Insurer is a vehicle they will cover there is not a problem.

Assuming the vehicle is covered, the Insurers will issue a "Letter of Indemnity" as they cannot back date a Certificate, the letter confirms they would have covered you for third party claims and is acceptable to the Police as proof of Insurance.

The problem you're probably experiencing is most front line customer service staff have very little knowledge of Insurance so will not be aware of the solution, this will be compounded by it happening at a weekend.

Try ringing about 10am tomorrow morning, politely explain the situation and ask them to supply you with a "Letter of Indemnity", they will need the time / date of the stop and will also often ask for the reason for the police stopping you.

If the letter does not arrive in time, you will need to speak to a senior police officer at the station and ask for an extension.

Aviva (General Accident's owners) are very active on social media eg Twitter & Facebook and this type of incident can often be sorted out very quickly on there as the staff manning the social media want to show they sort problems out quickly and they have additional authority to do this.

Don't worry over it, as this matter is easy enough to sort out and Aviva should sort it out quickly, if not contact them on Twitter / Facebook and they'll sort it quickly.

Incidently what sort of car is the correct car?

[NumberPlateSpot]

@sarahg49 Yeah this actually sounds like a simple mistake that’s just blown up because of the system. I’ve seen this happen where one letter is wrong in the car number plate and suddenly it shows as no insurance, even though the policy is active. The fact you were paying for it and everything else matches your car really matters here.

Also, the wrong plate not even existing kind of proves it’s just a typo and not like you insured a different car.


Your insurance company should really just confirm that the policy was live at that time. Sometimes they’re slow over email, but if you push a bit or raise a complaint, they usually sort it.
Honestly, it’s frustrating but you’re not in the wrong here. It’s one of those annoying admin errors that just needs someone to actually look at it properly.