Black Box Insurance Slammed As Malfunctions And Complaints Rise

‘Intrusive’ technology criticised as insurers force policyholders to defend anomalies in the telematics data from their cars

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Black box car insurance policies — which see location and driving data used to set insurance premiums — have been slammed as “exploitative data-for-discounts schemes”, amid privacy concerns anda series of complaints that malfunctioning black boxes have seen drivers threatened with cancelled insurance policies.

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which regulates the UK insurance industry, admitted in 2018 that it had received complaints from “a number of people who believed the data their ‘black box’ had collected wasn’t right”. Those growing numbers may be linked to the increasing use of black-box policies, but a worrying number of readers have contacted Auto Express to complain that their telematics devices had gone wrong — sometimes significantly so.

“106mph” in a 30 limit

Emily D wrote to us after her black box provider E-mailed, claiming that she had spent an extended period driving at 106mph in a 30mph limit. As well as being a speed Emily said she would “never dream” of reaching, the location of the alleged incident meant she would have had to travel 120 miles from her home in less than a minute. Her black box also deemed a local road with a 60mph limit to be a 30mph zone.