Quinn Direct Racist policy

MadsL

Cro-Magnon Cavan Man wrote:

Thats because this is our country, so until the bigger things are sorted out ie. what bobble said. I don't see the point in making a big scene about the minority.

I'm sure if you complain enough you'll get some sort of social welfare to pay ...blah blah blah bloody nig nogs...over here ...blah women...blah...jobs....

I'm sorry I can't hear you over the sounds of your knuckles dragging on the ground...when you find an argument that isn't based on bigoted claptrap, do let me know.

RuggieBear wrote:

On the discrimination of foreign nationals...could it be based on not holding an irish drivers licence or something. I was watching a british police show the other night and an officer stopped an iranian national for some dodgy driving and it turned out his iranian drivers licence isn't valid in Britain...

Nice try, but Nope...My wife (American with full Irish Licence) was quoted 600 euro more than the equivalent Irishwomen. I rang back and pretended that she was Korean and the quote was 3000 euro higher - again with a full Irish licence

Also I have discovered that Quinn Direct may be breaking EU directives in this regard...

As it was modified by the treaty of Amsterdam, article 13 of the treaty of the European Community gives the Community the power to take the necessary measures to combat discrimination.

On the basis of Article 13, the Council has adopted the following directives:

The directive 2000/43/CE of June 29th, 2000 relative to the principal of equal treatment of all persons regardless of race or ethnic origin, outlaws discrimination based on race in the domains of employment, education, social security, healthcare, and the access to goods and services, and the guarantee that victims of such discrimination compensation in all member states.

This would also cover sex discrimination in terms of men/women's premiums.

This directive - 2000/43/CE - was cited as being implemented in the recently passed Equality Bill, but they watered down the sex and race discrimination aspect despite a very strong directive from the EU. This was probably due the lobby about increasing everyone's premiums.

RuggieBear

MadsL wrote:

Nice try, but Nope...My wife (American with full Irish Licence) was quoted 600 euro more than the equivalent Irishwomen. I rang back and pretended that she was Korean and the quote was 3000 euro higher - again with a full Irish licence

Well...perhaps it's a learned to drive on the other side of the road issue....!? Clutching at straws...but yeah looks like a xenophobic policy to me!!!

MadsL

Well...perhaps it's a learned to drive on the other side of the road issue....!? Clutching at straws...

Yep, clutching at straws...Sri Lankans (and therefore I presume Tamils) drive on the left...

Farls

bigoted claptrap eh?

Tell that to the thousands of young irish males paying through the teeth for insurance.

So its alright for you to discriminate against me because i'm from cavan so obviously my knuckles drag the ground???

Does that mean that whatever part of Africa your from the insurance company has every right to presume the only prior driving experience you have is elephant riding, sorry driving i mean.


Farlz

Borzoi

This thread is sailing very close to the limit of my tolerence to personal abuse.

I'm leaving it open if it stays on topic

Don't make me get the jackboots and banning stick out

Boggle

... yeah back on topic.

What I was saying is that if you are looking for support in a letter writing campaign then naturally I would support it as it is blatantly wrong. Naturally I would prefer if you were trying to combat all discrimination connected to insurance companies but even if not the case I would never assume the attitude that since I'm being discriminated against then f*ck everyone else.

Imposter

MadsL wrote:

However the point is that Quinn Direct are abusing their position as
1. Data Controllers;
Information gathered has a statatory responsibility to be;
"the data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they were collected or are further processed"
- section 2(1)(c)(iii) of the Act

Clearly Nationality is inadequate for the purpose, irrelevant and excessive.

The same could be said for sex and age. Then you'll argue about statistics so i'll ask how QD or any other insurer can come up with statistics that would penalise ANY group if they weren't allowed to gather this info?

I agree with you MadSL this practice is terrible but I agree with the others who say that it's no worse than what is done against young males or any other grouping who is unfairly discriminated against.

Another thought: Might it be the case that the insurance company has some evidence that foreign drivers are more of a risk but are afraid to publish this info on the grounds that they'd be seen as discriminatory based on nationality and that they'd probably have a court case on their hands (possibly EU court), from people who could afford to do this, unlike young male drivers for example?

pickarooney

There's no such country as Tamil. It's a language/people. Maybe because it didn't feature on the list of available countries on Quinn's computer it defaulted to 8 grand?

MadsL

@FARLS

bigoted claptrap eh?
Tell that to the thousands of young irish males paying through the teeth for insurance.

Explain to me how this affects young irish males.

So its alright for you to discriminate against me because i'm from cavan so obviously my knuckles drag the ground???

No, I just deliberately put in the Cavan bit so that you would immediately respond with the discrimination against people from Cavan line. Doesn't feel that good eh? Maybe you are teeny step towards understanding what it is like to be discriminated against on the basis of where you are from. My knuckles dragging on the ground comment was about the intelligence of your argument. Borzoi - this was meant to attack the post not the poster, apologies if I went too far.

Does that mean that whatever part of Africa your from the insurance company has every right to presume the only prior driving experience you have is elephant riding, sorry driving i mean.

Eh? Does what mean what? Having an Irish Driving licence means what exactly?

Imposter wrote:

I agree with you MadSL this practice is terrible but I agree with the others who say that it's no worse than what is done against young males or any other grouping who is unfairly discriminated against

Therefore young male drivers should join a protest as the next step is getting to a fair non-age based quotation system...

Imposter wrote:

Might it be the case that the insurance company has some evidence that foreign drivers are more of a risk but are afraid to publish this info on the grounds that they'd be seen as discriminatory based on nationality and that they'd probably have a court case on their hands (possibly EU court), from people who could afford to do this, unlike young male drivers for example?

Young male drivers have brought court cases. But have largely had then either rejected or unsupported. Eu law does not allow say the IFSRA to have anything to say on underwriting or pricing.

There's no such country as Tamil. It's a language/people. Maybe because it didn't feature on the list of available countries on Quinn's computer it defaulted to 8 grand?

Possibly, but notice when they fixed the 'rate instruction' mistake the quote was still nearly 4 grand!

mike65

From QD radio ad-

Terms and Conditions Appply, but not too many

Mike.

Farls

I was just underlining what boggle was saying about young males in Ireland being discriminated against, and this is a bigger problem than non nationals.

You Madsl then pawned it off as being "bigoted claptrap".

I didn't say having an irish licence meant anything. Just grossly showing how the insurance company can look on non national situations.

I was only following in how low you were bringing the arguement.

There is a protest group out there called MIJAG as i mentioned before.

Farlz

MadsL

I was just underlining what boggle was saying about young males in Ireland being discriminated against, and this is a bigger problem than non nationals.

You Madsl then pawned it off as being "bigoted claptrap".

Err, I think you we thanking QD for doing something to keep out the foreigners...I stopped listening after that.

I was only following in how low you were bringing the arguement.

Trust me, I would have to bring your mother into it to get as offensive as you were being.

Something along the lines of Africans elephant riding I think was your stunning conclusion.

uberwolf

TBH your posts (MadsL) have for the best part been coherent and persuasive and I have altered my viewpoint as a consequence in this instance. This does appear to have been illegal and unjustified.

MadsL

Thanks Uberwolf, your honesty is much appreciated.

MadsL

Irony of Ironies...

I've just dicovered that the Quinn Group's slogan/strapline/slogan wotsit is.....


STRENGTH THROUGH DIVERSITY
http://www.quinn-group.com/

laughed my ass off at that one...

woody

Pardon my french but I hate that shower of thiefing Cavan C*nts.

Ignorance is on the customer service rep course.

Just boycott them and abuse them...they have no scruples nor should we.

Got a lovely quote of 865 full comp with hibernian who are really giving a chance to people and will profit from it...got 17% off for having no peno points

shoegirl

I think there is a legitimate case if a person gained their licence in a country where driving on the RHS is the norm, otherwise it would appear like unreasonable loading. And yes, it is discriminatory.

As for all these "non nationals" getting social welfare to pay for cars, I don't think so, the only non-nationals i know driving cars are well heeled high earners brought over by multinationals to babysit their interests in Ireland. The guys in the asylum system get 19 euro a week to play with, that wouldn't buy any sort of a car, except something ready to be scrapped.

Lets face it, the Irish insurance industry has been systematically discriminating on the grounds of age and gender for years. The only difference is that these days people who get quotes of 2k+ are stupid/wealthy enough to pay that money. With the number of young people I know willing enough to pay that amount, no wonder the insurers are hiking their rates. Back in my youth if you couldn't afford insurance you got the bus until you were old enough to get a reasonable quote, which proportionate to wages was not much less than it is now. It is unsurprising now that such a large percentage of the population are the grown up under 21s that the insurers didn't want the business of in 1989 that they have found new reasons to exclude them - and will keep doing so as long as people are willing to pay them.

positron

Okay, a few points here.

1. Tamil is not a country or a nation. I would imagine its a case of the reporter assuming that everyone would know what a 'Tamil' person is. Now, Tamil is a language spoken in TamilNadu, an Indian state. There are many Tamils in Dublin and in rest of the country, most of them IT engineers and the rest are doctors and the like. There are a few Tamil students doing various courses at DBS, DIT etc. Tamils generally good with numbers and science in general (CV Raman, nobel prize winning physician, was Tamil.). My point is that there is a huge difference between asylum seekers and a knowledge worker with Postgraduate degree in Science.

2. The person in question is a non-national, IT engineer working for a multi-national company.

3. He has an Irish license. I don't know if he had an Indian driving license, because even with an Indian driving license, he have to follow the usual driving license test and procedures to get one here (crazy huh?).

4. Indians drive on the same side of the road as in Ireland, in fact, all former British colonies drives on the ‘wrong side’ (as americans say)!.

Now, IMHO, that was blindly ignorant from QD's part, and they should either admit it and promise to review their policies, or should be sued for discrimination based on nationality/race.

my .02c

ubu

hey farls,
would the fact that you used to work for QD have anything to do with your attitude towards non-nationals and that you feel the need to defend their obviously discrimanatory policy?
do they give you some sort of conditioning on induction which basically has you coming out thinking Foreigners = Bad

Farls

Me having worked for them has nothing to do with it, just have had far too many bad experiences with non-nationals to have any time or pittance for them.

Farlz

jayok

Farls, can I ask a simply question here...

"non-nationals" - do you feel the same way about the French or the Germans?

Hmmm... maybe it is not anyone else, maybe it's just you.

As for QD and their policies, I find this incredible. I have never contacted them regarding a quote and never would. Equally to I encourage all I know to avoid them like the plague.

ciasto

I know a girl who couldn't get insurance cause the licence was not EU. So she waited till her country joined the EU and exchanged for an Irish one. Now she has an Irish EU licence and when she went to get insurance she was told she needs to take a one day test to prove she can drive on this side of the road.

I can't remember what insurance company it was but the test was around 250 euro and they supplied her with a phone number to book it for herself.