Dial Direct Annual Review - Frustrating Process

So, the annual review song and dance has now commenced with Dial Direct. Why can’t insurers simply give you a reasonable increase, more or less in line with industry standards or inflation, and let that be? Instead, every year I need to go through the hassle of speaking to who knows how many different people trying to get a premium in line with what any reasonable person could expect. This year, things are no different, except that I haven’t yet actually received my review letter – I noticed the increased premium on the app. Nevertheless, it was 18% more than my current premium. Called in, and the agent managed to bring it down to a 12% increase. I was obviously still not happy with this, so very politely asked to be transferred to someone who had the necessary authority levels to “do something more”. Call got cut just after 11 am, and I eventually called back again at around 12:30. By this time I had actually noticed that during my last annual review, in June 2020, the excess on one of the vehicles on my policy was increased – I do not recall asking for this. It’s no wonder the premium decreased on this particular vehicle when we did this back and forth last year, but this is probably on me for not noticing Dial Direct slipping this right past me. Nevertheless, now that I ask for the excess to be reduced back to what it was, I am told they can’t do that. They cannot reduce the excess to less than what it is currently, because that is the minimum. So, you can change the excess without my consent, and when I ask for the action to be reversed, it can’t be done? But if I had accepted last year’s annual review and not called in to reduce my premium, no changes would have been effected on the policy and that lower excess would still have been applicable? How exactly is this benefitting the customer in any way? May I also remind you that I have been a client of yours since 2006 – that’s 15 years! I see some missed calls at 13:05 which may have been from a manager or supervisor or escalations department – but I told the agent I spoke to that I would be in a conference call until 13:30! Anyways, I am still waiting for someone to call me back. It is now 15:50 in the afternoon. It’s just so frustrating having to rely on social media posts and Hello Peter reviews to get some sort of reaction from these people. This is exactly what I had to do last year – read my review on Hello Peter posted on 25 Jun 2020, at 16:02 pm. Again, whilst I was happy with the revised premium at the time, I guess I failed to notice that the amendments did not represent a like-for-like change. Sigh. Perhaps it would be less infuriating simply going to another insurer?