I know it is a bit of a pain sometimes and that’s precisely the difference between theoretical processes and practical / convenient way of doing things. All processes are legal processes so you will get your money back no matter what but using the “loi Hamon” (now called resiliation infra-annuelle, much less simple so I’m sticking to Loi Hamon lol) is completely streamlined and simple and you are certain to get your money back within 30 days according to the law.
And to answer your question it is the beauty of the loi Hamon, you can switch whenever you want as long as the policy is more than 12 months old and the loi stipulates that it has to be completely free of charge, no admin fees, no retainer, and money pre-paid needs to be refund to the penny (unused part of the premium is annual payment for example). So you can change your policy today if you want (the loi hamon is a fixed 30-day process )
My entire career was in military procurement as a buyer and later as a subcontract administrator, so you could say that buying is my life. I don’t think twice about switching companies to get a better deal. I think insurance compnies in particular are constantly probing, trying to test us, to see how much they can jack up the price (for no solid reason) just because they know we won’t want to be bothered to go through the pain of switching. ( For example- my GMF went up about 20% last year and I didn’t switch because I thought I missed the window. Based on that, I expect them to try 20%, or more, on me next year and see what I do) I think that’s what drives a lot of the price increases we see- just laziness on the part of buyers. For me, it’s personal. I love competition in the marketplace. There were a lot of times in my career when I was forced to buy something from somebody because somebody else in my company (or the US government) decided to buy it from them. So, I go out of my way now to switch to a better deal, even if it may not seem to be ‘worth’it. I prefer to reward suppliers that work to kep prices low. My 2 centimes…
Groupama’s I found very good service and very competitive prices. Even sorted my car accident in the UK, damaged was from someone driving into the back of me, and two passengers had whiplash, luckily was ok to drive the car back to France for repairs, and sorted out promptly. The passengers whiplash, took longer because of the rules change due to Brexit, but they were compensated through a small claims, eventually.
When I first rented this house I searched for renter’s insurance. I think I went through les furets and the cheapest was Acheel, so I signed on with them, which was easy to do from their website. A day or two after and on contract, I had a question so I tried to contact via chat as this was the method of communication they required. They ignored me for several days so I asked myself what good is this if I really need help? So I terminated them (within the 14 days). You can get some sense of how honest they are through Trustpilot and Google, but sometimes reviews may be inaccurate.
If I ever hear of a friend having an accident I always ask how their insurer responded. That’s how we ended up with the Crédit Mutuel - a friend had an accident while on holiday in the UK and had fantastic treatment from them. That was years ago though. So maybe time for a change.
I suspect with the big names, they’re much of a muchness. For example, Crédit Mutuel uses Mondial Assistance (whom we found useless when we had to call them last year). But our previous insurer used Mondial Assistance too so it wouldn’t have made much difference who were insured with. As far as breakdown service is concerned.
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