warning - 1st Central hike price scam

ClarySageDoll

Apologies for long thread. 

I feel 1st central are deliberately attracting new customers by offering low car insurance premiums, which are then hiked up once  “new information” comes to light, even if no new information has emerged. Perhaps if I’m kind, I’ll say it’s a glitch in their system and the information isn’t being recorded correctly. But the new information and price hike inevitably fall outside the 14 day cooling off period, so you end up with cancellation fees, admin fees and interest if you want to cancel.

I also fell victim to their strange practice of changing their banking reference name and thought I owed them money.

Read below if you are interested in how I was scammed repeatedly by 1st central.

I searched a comparison site to renew my car insurance. 1st central came out as cheapest. I clicked link and applied online at their own website. I included the dates of all previous claims and windscreen damage (this had also been added in my comparison site details).  I made a first payment by card. 

14 days later I was asked for documents to validate my car insurance, specifically proof of NCD and claims history. I uploaded the document from my previous insurer with this information. 

A month after registering I got another urgent message advising that the statement of fact that I had provided was insufficient. The email included erroneous information about the claims. It said if the information was incorrect to provide evidence in 2 days, from the insurer at time of incident. Luckily I had this document which I provided. 

I then received an email  just before 7 pm on Saturday 13 July, advising me that having completed their checks my policy had been recalculated with an additional charge of £454.74.

There was no way to discuss this as both the Policy team and Complaints team work Monday- Friday. I decided to cancel my policy and went elsewhere. Mysteriously I was unable to access my account online, so  emailed my intention to cancel.

I checked my bank account for “1st” and couldn’t see any payment taken in July, so on Monday I spoke to the Policy team and explained why I wanted to cancel and that I was willing to pay any outstanding premium. (I had provided all claims information including dates when I applied as well as on the statement of fact.) As I had provided all information when I applied, there was no new information, so the price hike was bogus.

They insisted I pay a cancellation fee of £50. I refused but agreed to pay cover up to 14th. They said they would waive the admin fee of £50 but not the cancellation fee. They wouldn’t take any payment and advised I put in a complaint.

The complaints team phoned the next day but insisted I pay cover up to this day, even though I already was now covered elsewhere. They waived the cancellation fee and told me I owed them £17.67. After I paid I got a confirmation email. It showed I had actually made a payment in July and I was also charged the admin fee. Confused, I checked my bank snd saw that the first payment in June was to “1st central” but the direct debit was to “Firstcentral”. In total I was charged £141.58 for 43 days of cover.

BEWARE - 1st central are using nefarious means to attract customers and then hitting them hard with increased premiums once they are trapped.

DullGreyGuy

Insurance is a contract of good faith, you make declarations about your situation which the insurer broadly trusts and you trust in return that they will settle any legitimate claim you have.

The problem is that these days people are lax, they guesstimate things and yet click the button to say all information provided is totally accurate. Whilst I am no fan of 1st Central there are thousands of customers who've taken the time to check dates, amounts etc when getting their quotes, the company have confirmed these are all correct and they've gotten a very cheap price. There are then the others who guessed they probably bought their car 18 months ago or so and when 1st Central have checked this wasnt true, it was actually just 12 months ago and as such the premium is adjusted for the correction. 

Legally you only have the right to cancel a policy within 14 days, after that you are down to the terms you agreed to be bound to when buying. A cancellation after 43 days is after the cooling off period and so you have no statutory rights however the majority of companies allow mid term cancellation on Motor in exchange for a fee. You wanted to cancel, you need to pay the fees you agreed to. 

It's unclear from your post what the "new information" actually was, most of those that complain on here about this company do admit they were in error when completing the application form eventually. If you feel all your declarations were in line with the facts then register a complaint and challenge them. 

ClarySageDoll

Thanks DullGreyGuy. I did declare all information and put in a complaint. They waived the cancellation fee but failed to enlighten me when I asked what I owed from 3-14th July and that they had in fact already received the whole of July’s premium. The money I “owed” was the rest of their admin fee (£50) even though the Policy team had agreed not to charge me.

cw8825

Your monthly direct debit is not you paying for July. 

You’re paying back a loan over the 11 payments. 

When paying monthly you will almost always owe money when cancelling

Mildly_Miffed

I'm not sure what the "scam" is here.

You took out insurance.
You provided information that, when they checked into it, did not tally with other sources.
As a result, they increased the premium.

What information did you originally provide, and what did the letter from your previous insurer say?

As for the cancellation - remember that, as @cw8825 says, you do not "pay monthly". You buy an annual policy and borrow money for the premium, then repay that finance.

Nobbie1967

Thanks for the warning, I shall avoid them. There does seem to be a trend of the cheaper insurers mining the information to see if there is any way of extracting a bit more cash for discrepancies that don’t materially affect the risk. I bet companies like this incentivise their staff to extract as much extra after quoting as possible. 

ClarySageDoll

Hello Mildly_Miffed, the scam is that I provided all the information in triplicate when I signed up. First through the comparison site, second in online application form and third with documents uploaded. Somehow this got lost and uploaded incorrectly and my premium was then hiked up. I couldn’t discuss this for two days and when I did, I repeatedly asked why the payment hadn’t been taken in July. At no point did the Policy team or complaints team point out they had received the payment but reference had changed in bank from “1st” and “First”.  The Policy team said they would waive the admin fee, and registered my complaint. The complaint team agreed to waive the cancellation fee but failed to spell out what I owed was an admin fee.

Mildly_Miffed

ClarySageDoll said:

Hello Mildly_Miffed, the scam is that I provided all the information in triplicate when I signed up. First through the comparison site, second in online application form and third with documents uploaded. Somehow this got lost and uploaded incorrectly and my premium was then hiked up. I couldn’t discuss this for two days and when I did, I repeatedly asked why the payment hadn’t been taken in July. At no point did the Policy team or complaints team point out they had received the payment but reference had changed in bank from “1st” and “First”.  The Policy team said they would waive the admin fee, and registered my complaint. The complaint team agreed to waive the cancellation fee but failed to spell out what I owed was an admin fee.

My question was about the consistency of the information from proposal to documents.

cw8825

ClarySageDoll said:

Hello Mildly_Miffed, the scam is that I provided all the information in triplicate when I signed up. First through the comparison site, second in online application form and third with documents uploaded. Somehow this got lost and uploaded incorrectly and my premium was then hiked up. I couldn’t discuss this for two days and when I did, I repeatedly asked why the payment hadn’t been taken in July. At no point did the Policy team or complaints team point out they had received the payment but reference had changed in bank from “1st” and “First”.  The Policy team said they would waive the admin fee, and registered my complaint. The complaint team agreed to waive the cancellation fee but failed to spell out what I owed was an admin fee.

I’d point out.
By what your saying initial quote could only have been based off you providing the incorrect information - unless your saying that inbetween you checking the application form and purchasing this has changed

it’s also not uncommon for the direct debit name to be different to the name when you buy on the website. There’s no scam there

WheresmeMoneygone

I go with the replies that (labourious as it is) the insures are normally covered somewhere in the many pages of terms, conditions etc.
I fell foul of this when I changed from years of Cover by another front line car insurer and did not realise that I wasn’t covered to drive other vehicles. Totally my fault, making an “assumption”
However, whereas previous cover over 50 years of driving clearly state the cover, 1st Central do not.
In the documents it says that the insured are”usually” covered to drive other vehicles on a third party basis, there are exceptions. The exceptions do not appear to be listed so I called 1st central and they confirmed I was not covered to drive other vehicles, but either could not or would not say why. I cancelled my renewal. Their cancellation fee is £50 but the actual charge was given as just under £115

DullGreyGuy

WheresmeMoneygone said:

However, whereas previous cover over 50 years of driving clearly state the cover, 1st Central do not.
In the documents it says that the insured are”usually” covered to drive other vehicles on a third party basis, there are exceptions. The exceptions do not appear to be listed so I called 1st central and they confirmed I was not covered to drive other vehicles, but either could not or would not say why. I cancelled my renewal. Their cancellation fee is £50 but the actual charge was given as just under £115

Most policies will refer you to the certificate of insurance to confirm if you have DoC or not because the policy book is generic and many dont allow under 21s or 25s to have DoC etc.