Got the fright of my life yesterday when trying to renew my car tax for my Punto on the DVLA website.
I was told I couldn't renew as there was no valid insurance policy in force. I knew I had renewed the insurance at the the last renewal but to be sure I checked my credit card statement, no payment made, so I rang the company and spoke to a call centre somewhere in the depths of India to be told that my policy had not been renewed at the last renewal. Talk about cold sweats, anyway to cut the story short after speaking to several people and being on the phone for at least 30 minutes I finally got to speak to someone in the UK who told me that yes my policy had been cancelled but it had been cancelled in error, apparently at the time of my last renewal they were having problems with a new accounting system which had failed to process my credit card payment and when no payment was received at renewal had cancelled the policy, they told me this had happened to several customers and they had rung everyone to put this matter right, they had rung my office number when I was out and I never got the message. They assured me that as it was their fault I would have been indemnified in case of a claim (fortunately I didn't have to test this assurance).
All is now OK and I am insured but I hate to think how I would have tried to explain this to the boys in blue if I had been stopped and charged with having no insurance.