Driver discovers she is subscribed to insurance as she pays French parking fee
She said she had never asked for or wanted the insurance and had to right to be refunded
The woman said she paid for parking, but noticed she had been charged an extra insurance fee for a policy she had not asked for
Hadrian/Shutterstock
A driver from Dijon has shared the moment when she discovered she had been unknowingly charged for insurance when parking at a public car park.
On October 28, a woman in Dijon paid for parking on her smartphone and discovered that in addition to the €2.20 for parking, she was also charged 22 cents for ‘insurance’ from Chubb, a specialist insurance company, reported Bien Public.
This is despite her saying she never asked for or wanted this insurance. On principle, she asked for the amount to be refunded, and shared the story to raise awareness among other drivers.
The case highlights the dangers of online sales and ‘accidental subscriptions’, where additional services are sometimes surreptitiously added by default, without the consumer being fully aware, or during a payment process that operators likely know clients will be going through quickly (and possibly when distracted).
In its defence, the car park operator states that this insurance is offered during the payment process, and that the driver has the option of refusing it on several occasions.
‘Hidden’ subscriptions
An Ipsos study from September 2021 found that people in France have an average of ten different subscriptions, but more than a third (35%) don't know exactly how many they have, reports Capital.
These may include the more obvious telephone or internet packages, press subscriptions, video and streaming platform subscriptions.
Read also: Insurance change for drivers: Can I see if car on new French database?
Yet, these can also include more ‘hidden’ subscriptions, which may amount to several dozen euros being deducted from your account every month, for a service you forgot you signed up for, or had subscribed to during payment for something else, without even being aware of it.
For example, in March 2024, French insurance watchdog authority l’Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR) warned that certain types of insurance taken out at the same time as a purchase are effectively useless.
For example, it said that insurance policies linked to the purchase of a mobile phone have an explicit consent failure rate of 60%, meaning that consumers have taken out these policies without even realising it.
Read also: What is the ‘assurance-vie’ our French bank is offering us?
