I recently had a very negative experience when trying to renew my policy. Over a few days, I spent many hours of my time trying to get in contact with a member of the customer service team regarding my car insurance renewal and repeatedly being put on hold. I received verbal confirmation of a quote, just to have it change due to my occupation without any explanation. Hastings attempted to charge me ?250 on top of my agreed policy quote to change my occupation from a student to full time employment. Then additional ?200 to pay in monthly instalments. Which resulted in the quote for my second year of car insurance to be the same as the first - after having a 90/100 driver score rating on my black box. This is not the agreement which I signed when I chose to take out my insurance with them, a good drivers score will result in discounts for the following years insurance. Also, I was charged ?1,916.63 to my bank account, which has took me into my overdraft. I did not receive any notifications from Smart Miles of this payment and only found out my contacting my bank directly. This money is the sum of two car insurance quotes, yet I had verbal confirmation that neither would be taken out of my bank and did not give my consent for this payment to be deducted. When I asked the Smart Miles customer service team why I had received these charges, the only reason they gave is that they were 'unsure'. I am 18 years old and have just got my first job - it is unacceptable to assume I have this amount of money spare. In addition to this, I spend a further 3 hours of my time at work trying to call the customer service team and resolve the issue - and was repeatedly put on hold. I was informed by the manager that if I requested by refund on that day, it would take 5 working days to come into my account. I also would not be eligible to be covered for 14 days 'cooling off period', without explanation. This left me without any money in my bank account, but had to find an alternative car insurance by the next morning as I have commitments. He did not care to help me find an alternative insurance plan. This service is disgusting and I will make sure to avoid Hastings Smart Miles in the future.