Car insurance cancelled - insurer says they didn't receive NCB

My son got a new car in July and got his insurance sorted. He paid them in full and I sent off the requested original of his NCB from his previous insurance company.

Last week Friday 13th Sept he received a letter in the post stating 3rd notice as he had not sent in his NCB and this was the 3rd request he had to either pay an additional €1600 as they were increasing his premium or they would cancel the policy. He has not received anything in the post from them since he received his insurance certificate. He had no emails either from them. He rang the company straight away and advised the original had been sent but he would contact the previous company for another copy. They said this would suffice and he needed to send it in as soon as he got it.

He was out of country then all week so I have been keeping an eye on the post and rang the previous company who said it had been sent out in post. It arrived today and I sent it straight away to the email address given at 9am. He found the original details for his insurance and he logged into the customer portal which he hadn’t been aware of and seen letters that they had uploaded to the portal but again that he had no notification of.

They also had stated on a recent one from yesterday that they cancelled his policy. He rang them straight away and was being sent from agent to agent and was promised at least 6 calls back after each agent spoke to their manager. No one rang him back. The last one got him to call out his email address and strangely 10mins later there was an email there advising they were issuing him with a refund of €951 for a policy he paid €1800 for at the end of July.

Are they within their rights to do this? He, nor I have the money to pay for another year up front of insurance and he needs his car for college and work placements. He worked for two years after leaving school to save the money for a car and to pay for his insurance in full himself so I am desperately seeking some advice!

This is a bit difficult to follow...

1. He was covered from end of July to now but they have cancelled the policy now?
2. He paid €1,800 but only got a refund of €951?
3. He was asked for an extra €1,600 due to issues with his documentation which implies that the original premium was €200? Surely that's not right?
4. Didn't they explain how they arrived at the €951 refund figure or why they're retaining €849?
5. He doesn't have cover now and needs to get covered ASAP?
6. Who is the insurer?
7. Most insurers allow payment in instalments rather than in full up front albeit for an additional fee.
8. Has he shopped around as widely as possible for cover as quotes can vary wildly/widely in my experience?

Raise a complaint with the insurance company. This sounds all wrong. How did you send the original NCB document? By email or ordinary post?

Most insurance companies these days allow uploading of such documents online which is much safer and reliable than mailing things.

A number of insurance companies now only issue such communications online via a portal, it's all set out in their terms & conditions. Is there a chance he had a typo when entering his email address when organising the insurance? If he received no emails at all, you can be pretty sure they didn't have the correct email address on file.

They are within their rights to cancel the policy if they didn't receive the NCB in time.

Never, ever send the original NCB, always a copy. Some insurers only provide evidence up to 6 years, others look for more for full discounts so it's good to be able to put your hands on previous ones to easily prove a long claim free history.

Your best approach here is to ensure they have a valid NCB and try convince them to reinstate the policy, removing the cancellation from record. Otherwise your son will have to disclose that cancellation to future insurers and some will refuse to quote as a result.