You think driving is a privilege?
That’s debatable.
You think paying monthly for car insurance is a privilege?
It sure is!
Look, every insurance company in Ontario will allow you to pay monthly for car insurance. But, you know what happens when you miss a payment and a policy gets cancelled because of that? It will show up on your insurance history (The report is called Autoplus) as cancelled for non-payment. Then, when you try to set up another insurance policy in the future, this cancellation will show up.
Non-payment cancellations affect your rates
A cancellation for non-payment on your record will affect your rates. You will pay more because of it.
But that might not even be the worst of it. With one cancellation for non-payment on your record, some insurance companies will not even allow you to pay monthly; they’ll require full payment.
Two Cancellations
With two cancellations for non-payment on your record, the majority of insurance companies in Ontario will flat-out decline to insure you because they’ll consider you to be high risk. The few that are still willing will demand full payment. In some circumstances, you might still be able to get a policy that will allows monthly payments, but those circumstances would be extremely rare.
So ya, paying monthly for insurance is a privilege. Don’t blow it.
Don’t take this the wrong way; I’m not trying to scare you. Rather, my intent is to give advice. I often tell my clients that this is one part of insurance rating that they can control. If you know that your monthly payments will go NSF, you know that your policy will end up getting cancelled as a result. You’re better off cancelling the policy yourself as this won’t affect you negatively.
PS… “I was out of the country” or “I was in the hospital” are not good excuses. You wouldn’t expect your mortgage or credit card companies to accept these as excuses, would you? I bring these up because that majority of people try these. They don’t work.
