My premium was hiked by £1,000

WHEN Millie Hewitt (pictured) passed her driving test at 17, she quickly realised that opting for a telematics policy was the most affordable way to get cover.

So the University of the West of England fine arts student, now 19, insured her £1,000 Suzuki Swift car through Adrian Flux Insurance for £1,200.

The insurer sent her a small black box with instructions on how to stick it to her windscreen.

She also had to download an app on her mobile so that the insurer could notify her about her driving habits.

But she says: ‘I was living in an area with lots of potholes and, whenever I drove over them, the black box seemed to think I had been in an accident.

‘I would receive notifications or they would call me up to check I was all right. It was so irritating.’

It meant that Millie would be interrupted during college lectures. Once, the student even received a warning notification about a collision when her car was parked in a garage.

Her insurer ended up cancelling her policy just one month before it was due to renew, after the black box fell off her windscreen.

She had left it on her dashboard, but the insurer insisted she had to buy a new £30 cradle to put it back on the windscreen.

When she refused, a letter giving her seven days’ notice of the cancellation, and another confirming that the policy had already been cancelled, arrived in the same envelope days later.

The cancelled policy remained on Millie’s record and, when she tried to find cover elsewhere, she was quoted up to £8,000. Millie says: ‘I had to go for another telematics policy costing £2,500 as it is so much more expensive not to have a black box.’

An Adrian Flux spokesman says it only called Millie three times and that two further ‘incidents’, which triggered calls, wouldn’t have been recorded if the device had been reattached properly.

The spokesman claims Millie never contacted the company about any inaccuracies and that it cancelled the policy because Millie failed to follow the rules by replacing the cradle and reattaching the device.

He adds: ‘There is no evidence that [the device] is not accurate when used as intended.’