Looking for some advice. In Feb this year someone put a dent in our driver car door. We ran elephant.co.uk (our insurer) to check what to do. They advised to get some quotes, it might be cheaper than losing our excess. A claim was set up in the system. We got the car fixed without going through the insurer, and got them to cancel the claim on the system.

Our renewal came through last week (we have also changed the car) - our renewal was quite shockingly more than we were expecting. I rang them to be told that the type of car we had, meant the risk factor had increased (we have a Type R Honda Civic 57 plate). I cancelled the insurance, and got quotes online.

I decided to go with Diamond as they were by far the cheapest quote. However it wouldn't let me pay online. I had to phone them. They told me that I had not disclosed an 'incident' that was in our records.... I argued that we did not make a claim, it had been cancelled on the system, we had kept our no claims bonus (4 years), and that we were £300 out of pocket for repairs, not the insurance company. However, none of this mattered, and the quote was put up by £140.

I complained to elephant to get a reply stating this : "When you obtianed your diamond quote, you omitted the incident. As an insurer we rate on all accident or incidents, fault or not, when setting our premiums. We do this because we have found, looking at past claim results, that customers who have an incident or a non-fault accident often go on to have a fault one. Although this may sound unlikely, the evidence we have from our data supports this.

Any accident suggests a higher average exposure to every day driving risks. It could mean driving in the rush hour or on typically dangersous stretches of road or parking on busy roads. The higher your exposure, the more likely you may be to claim. Alternatively you could live in an area that suffers frequent bouts of vandalism,although you yourself may not have made a claim, the likelihood of your doing so is increased. Or the type of car you drivee mayb e more prone to malicious damage or theft. These are all non-fault incidents, but will add to the risk we are undetaking in insuring your car. This will result in an increase in premium"

Please can someone tell me if they are allowed to get away with this? I asked them to tell me what the incentive was for anybody being honest with their car insurance, as that is what we tried to do, and have been heavily penalized for it.

Subsequently, any insurance quotes i get now, i'm unsure if i'm meant to declare this non-fault incident, as when i do, the quote comes back to say the company are not able to provide us with insurance...... or if i leave it out, will I again be accusing of omitting an incident in my car insurance quote ?

thanks