Smartdriverclub Reviews 37

Worst company for car insurance I’ve ever been with

They are disgusting, I would not wish this company on my enemies

These people are absolute clowns & I can't understand why the comparison sites entertain getting stupidly ridiculous quotes from them.
I have a 51 year claim-free driving record & they've quoted me £6,569.44
My renewal premium with my existing insurer, Halifax, went up from £112 to £162 so I used a comparison site & got this moronic quote. I shopped around & then I got my current insurer to reduce it to £150.

The absolute worse insurance company going. I have a month left on my policy and rang to enquire to see how much it would cost to cancel and move to another insurance company. After a while on hold, they told me they would need to charge me admin fees, smart plug fees as well as the last payment on the policy, baring in mind my policy is £35 a month, they tried to say it would cost me nigh on £240 to cancel my last month. Complete and utter con artists.

wow just done a go compare and my quote was £7000 per year. thought I was driving a Ferrari. normal quote is around £300. stay well clear they are rogues :(

Wanted to cancel my policy, but left on hold for 40 minutes and then cut off. So I will cut off my direct debit instead and chuck the tag in the bin...

Got a 7 day cancellation notice for excessive speeding when i wasnt so i rang up on friday 5/11/21 and they told me it would be sent back to the underwriter's and i would hear back first thing monday well Thursday the 11/11/21 came around still no word back so i contacted them again they said inconclusive data the cancellation had been revoked.. i though brilliant cant complain with that didnt even bother me that they hadn't rang me back like said prior... That was untill Monday 15/11/21 when i received the same email again my policy was being cancelled in seven days even tho my app had recorded my journey during that time but did not record speeding.. so again im being punished for what seems to be a Faulty box... They were ment to ring me back on Tuesday.. they didnt so i contacted them again today to be told the exact same thing as monday that it would be sent to the underwriters but he could not guarantee that the policy cancellation would be revoked like last time.. they are aware i dont work due to disabilities yet leave this hanging over my head.. plus they arnt easy to get in touch with usually an hour roughly on hold and that 0330 number is not cheap either

On hold for 1 hour 30 mins finally got through to a dial tone then call disconnected.

Tried again on hold 1 hour 50 mins

Seems I’ve had a similar experience to so many others. They are unresponsive and now my new insurer is threatening to cancel my policy as I can’t prove my no claims. I’ve been left on hold for hours and once just cut off because their call centre closed at 5pm, I have emailed, used their website contact form and their complaints procedure with no response. They may be cheaper but if you leave you’ll get burnt. I left not because of their pricing but because they send the renewal so late you can’t fairly compare it to other companies as it’s too close to the renewal date which pushes up premiums.

We have a really bad experience with this company. We could not fix the smart plug and try to call them but they never answered. We get a threatening letter that the policy will cancel within 7 days. Again cannot contact them. It turns out the smart plug is faulty. I want to cancel their policy, was not able to reach their customer care, on-call for 55 minutes... look like it's their strategy to not accept customer call hence they cannot cancel the policy.

We have ahve had really bad experience with this company. We could not fix the smart plug and try to call them but they never answered. We get a threathening letter that that the policy will cancel within 7 days. Again cannot contact them. It turn out the smart plug is faulty. They cancelled our policy and now asking us to return the smart plug within 7 days but never send us the packaging. They will increase our cancellation policy. I have emailed twice but not had any response. I am not going to let them getaway with this. I will contact the ombudsman today and complaint as this is a scam insurance company.

I've been out of the country for 8 weeks and I'm receiving emails saying my driving is poor at nights and over speeding in days
How is that possible when my car is parked up in a garage past 8 weeks only I have access to my keys
Total scam

Absolutely despicable insurance company.
I cancelled my policy due to the night time driving limitations which were not advertised as decreasing your score but they do, so I felt scammed. There was a fraudulent claim on my policy and I am currently trying to sort this out. It’s company has sent me threatening letters bullying me and causing me distress saying that they will send a debt collection agency to my address if I don’t pay them nearly £3000. This company is an absolute disgrace. You can’t get through on the phones and they don’t reply to emails.

I'm lukewarm on this company, mainly because of the night time driving penalisation and the fact that their score system doesnt make any sense, I've got a 98 speed score, 100 braking, and 100 night driving, but the overall score is 89... I don't know what maths they've put in the algorithm but 89 is not the average between 98,100 and 100. Plus the smartplugs works whenever it wants to, sometimes it doesnt record trips even though I've got the notification that it is recording the trip, been using it for 3 months now, I'll finish the year and see if they offer the 40% discount they promise. But overall I wouldn't recommend this company, not even to young drivers, pay the extra £££ and get an insurance with no black box, you will be much better off

Please please do not use this company. You cannot get through to them, you get disconnected or kept on hold. When you eventually do after being on hold for up to an hour, you will be sometimes answered by a male called Jordan. He either remains silent, or hangs up the phone on you. This happened to us on several occasions. They are the the most unprofessional team that we have ever dealt with. Terrible customer service. I really do not know how they are trading. Stay away at all costs. One word “COWBOYS”

Worst insurance company I have ever been involved with. Never will I go with a company again just because they are cheaper. Advised I could have a payment break as I had been furloughed then proceeded to cancel my insurance while a claim was in place and then try and charge me over £700 because the policy was cancelled while there was a claim - the policy was cancelled by them! Causing me so much stress. Do not use.

Had a year of using them, got above the 80 score needed to get the full 40% discount. When renewal time came was told I can’t get a renewal quote. Challenged it and it was a system error. New quote came in around 40% less than previous year! So all in all very good! Score marked down due to the renewal issue which a few people have stated too. I challenged it and sorted it reasonably quickly.

This company is a scam, they say that by using the black box you will get a discount on your renewal. After a year they would not even offer me a renewal quote, when my score was above 70.
Do not use this company, I rather pay £50 more and not have the blackbox.
I think they make everyone use the blackbox so that they can refuse to payout on policy if there was an accident.

I have kept my score at or within a single point of the maximum possible for an entire year and was promised a 40% discount because of this.
Come renewal time the quote was exactly the same as last year. The company claimed that this was because they had already applied the discount. When asked they could not say what the original amount was (It worked out to an irrational number.). Even their phone agent admitted this was unlikely to be a coincidence and they were obviously just keeping the premium the same and not discounting anything.

Furthermore their scoring is suspect as well. My scores sat at 100 for an extended period but the 'overall' score you are judged on never raised above 85. (You need a score of 80 to qualify for the "discount".) I suspect this is calculated by removing 15 from the average, making scores in the top category look easier to hit than they actually are.

That wouldn't be so bad if they even applied the discount, but they demonstrably do not.

The customer service is apalling, nothing but excuses and lies and agents acting offended and weird when given even the tamest probing questions. Go with someone else, it's usually cheaper anyway and the slight saving isn't worth having a plug breathing down your neck.

After 3 years of a consistent excellent rating we were just informed that they can no longer insure us!! Now I can’t get them to issue a no-claims certificate for my replacement insurance and they sent a threatening email that my cancellation fee (!!!) will increase if I fail to return the ‘smart plug’ in its original packaging...

Absolute crap insurance, being penalised for driving at night is ridiculous. Also not going change my driving habit, ie. I don't speed at all, sometimes a couple mph over but usual a good safe driver, however forget about overtaking vehicles etc because you'll get penalised. Would give zero if I could.