default notice from 1st Central after cancelling

embob74

OH took out a policy with 1st central finance.
The car was sold and we couldn't find how to cancel so saw on the website we could email them which we did. We cancelled with immediate effect.
10 days later we received an email to say we had to call them to cancel. So we did.
We were informed there is a £50 cancellation fee which we were already aware of. OH argued that a DD for £24.80 had come out since we first emailed and as they were saying we had to allow the next DD to go out they should use the date of the email as the cancellation date. They agreed to do this so after the next DD went out we cancelled it with the bank.
Now OH has received a default notice from 1st Central Insurance to say the DD has been cancelled (so they must have tried to take payment) and he has to reinstate it.
If he doesn't the outstanding balance of £148.40 will be due and if we don't pay that the insurer will cancel the insurance (result!) and pay any refund to 1st Central Insurance (not such a result) and to top it all of we get charged a £50 cancellation fee.

Anybody have any advice on where we stand?
We're happy to pay the £50 cancellation but not on top of continuous payments they seem to want.

InsideInsurance

You dont want them to cancel it due to non-payment. That you'll have to declare to all insurers for life and effectively bar yourself from any mainstream insurer.

You need to call them, the cancellation will normally cost more than simply the admin fee as many optional extras create no refund from the annual premium, brokers/ intermediaries often also have a commission clawback clause too. Once you have the total cost for cancellation, netted off what has been paid since cancellation request and then pay the remainder by card to simply close the matter.

embob74

The point is though that WE have already cancelled the policy!!

Firstly by email which they said wasn't sufficient and then by phone at which point the advisor agreed the policy was classed as cancelled from the date of the email and therefore since 2 payments for £24.80 had been taken I figure we owe them 40p.

keith1950

You didn't cancel correctly at first and are now trying to get out of paying the requested cancellation fees.

As Insideinsurance has already advised, you must now do everything possible to avoid them cancelling or your premiums will be screwed for years.

Pay what you owe and then write a letter of complaint if you are so upset.

If you don't sort this quickly any cancellation by them will appear on the insurance database and you will have to declare it forever.

mills705

So you guys put down a deposit, now you usually don't pay a dd for 59 days. So you pay insurance in arrears.
Did you take it out through a broker? If so an insurance arrangement fee is payable and any optional upgrades is also payable to them.
Now this usually results in a hefty balance figure! So if you paid one more then you may actually owe more