Westland Insurance Auto Insurance Reviews

We were with Westland Insurance for almost two years--home and car insurance, though this review will only touch on the car insurance. During the first year, the service was great. It wasn't the cheapest on the market but communication was always prompt and our rep was friendly, helpful, and communicative. They paired us with Aviva and despite their negative reviews, we never had an issue. Then in February 2018, we were switched to SGI, given a new rep, and the problems just snowballed. They had terminated their relationship with Aviva and moved us to SGI. Fine, at least they let us know. But our rates went up. The new insurance documents were also comparatively opaque and it was really difficult to figure out what we were actually paying for. We also found out (when we tried to renew our registration) that SGI is based in Saskatchewan and that it's ridiculously hard to get any sort of customer service in Alberta (more on that in a moment). They also switched us to 6-month renewal instead of annual... for some reason. It was all a giant a headache, but not a deal breaker. Then in May 2018, my partner and I sold our two vehicles and downsized to one slightly newer vehicle... and that's when we realized how bad communication had gotten. Our main issue was that we'd received a letter from SGI saying that we should expect a refund of approx. $850 for the cancellation of my vehicle policy. So it followed that we would probably be receiving two cheques, one for each vehicle. Instead, we received a single refund cheque for just shy of $800. We thought they'd short-changed us and forgotten to remove one of our vehicles from the policy (which is what the opaque documentation seemed to suggest since only my car seemed to have been removed and the new vehicle was listed as an "additional vehicle"). We emailed our rep asking for clarification and couldn't get a clear answer. We tried phoning SGI and just received a very curt response telling us "we don't deal with that, talk to your broker" before hanging up. The nail in the coffin is that we were still trying to get what should be a really simple answer two months later, in July. Our rep never seemed to have a clear answer for us--and that was when she could be bothered to respond. We went weeks between emails. For example, one of our last communications was our rep telling us "I just wanted you to know that I am not ignoring you; I am working on this and hope to have answers by tommorow (Friday)." That was literally the whole email, and yes, the spelling mistake was in there too. We received that on June 21st and on July 6, the day we finally had had enough and we asked for our policy to be cancelled, we still hadn't heard back from her. To be fair, we did finally receive an answer on July 9th, the day we'd requested our policy be terminated. Our rep sent us the cancellation form and chased it with an email telling us that the cheque was for the refund of our two policies together after the addition of the new vehicle. Fair enough, I guess... though it would have been nice to have clear documentation showing that in the first place and I have no idea why it took two months to get that answer. We still cancelled because of their abysmal communication and because we really didn't feel valued by their business. And, as if to prove our point, on the cancellation form, they got our home address wrong. Then they charged us through the nose for cancelling our policy before it was up despite this very clearly being on them and their communication. If this is the trouble we had simply getting a straight answer about our insurance, I can't even imagine how hard it would be to file a claim through them. Absolutely do not recommend.