I took out a Hastings Direct Smartmiles policy in 2013 for my son who had passed his test. All great. No problems. Told all my friends how pleased I was. Then I took out a second policy on another car, for my daughter who had just passed her test in 2016. What a different story. Complete nightmare. They have changed their black box supplier. The black box in my daughter's car is obviously faulty as it is returning a score of 100 for acceleration and 0 for braking. Concerned that something was amiss, I have been driving the car for the past three months. My daughter has not driven it at all. I have 30 years experience and have been driving super-smoothly. I have spent hours on the phone trying to get customer services to send out a technician to check the box, but they refuse. They insisted I go through a complaints process - which has taken another two months - and ended up with them telling me that the data from the box is correct. I am a chartered electronics engineer, and I can tell you that the box is likely suffering from a calibration problem. If the braking was really that harsh, that would indicate an erratic driver - but with a score of 100 for acceleration, I don't think so. Every time I ask for data analysis, they refuse, and every time I ask to speak to a manager - someone who can actually do something -they are all too busy. So I just end up repeating myself to yet another call centre person who knows nothing about electronics or signals analysis. Safe to say, I will be cancelling this policy. And for good measure I will cancel the other one too. I want nothing more to do with this bunch of cowboys. It seems that customer service is not part of their company operating values. Will they miss my two policies? No I doubt it. There will be some other 'customer' out there. Absolutely shocking. I have gone from evangelising about Hastings to absolutely loathing them. Tell all your friends not to bother.