Beware - they will quietly triple your excess after the first policy review

I signed up with MiWay just over a year ago, with a basic excess of R1 500. A few months ago I received my updated policy after the first year - I gave this a quick glance just to see by how much my premium was going up; since it wasn't that much I went on with my life. A month ago I submitted a claim for damage done to my side mirror and fender by a passing driver hitting my parked car, and when the quote for the repairs come in, lo and behold my excess is being quoted as R4 250! When I went back to check the updated policy of course I find that MiWay had sneaked in an increase to my excess. I called them to ask what the reason was for the extreme increase in the excess, and they said that apparently in the space of a year the cost to repair my car had gone up so much that they needed to do this. What makes me angry is not that they were making up for the increased cost of the insurance itself, it is that they didn't do this by increasing the premium - they just went ahead and decreased my cover. According to the customer care agent this is "how it's done at MiWay". This is dishonest MiWay - if the cost of providing a service goes up, you increase the cost, you don't decrease the service! That way the client will notice that the cost has gone up, and THEN they can renegotiate the service if necessary. I wonder how many of their clients are blissfully unaware that their cover has been decreased on the sly, and that they are in for a big surprise the next time they try and claim for something. Oh, and according to the customer care agent, this is now the basic excess that ALL their policies are being changed to, so if any of you reading this thought you had a lower excess, believe me your excess is now at least R4 250.