1st Central Car Insurance – Beware the Auto Renewal Bot – no Escape!

JimboMarimbo

As reported previously, 1st Central car insurance, with whom I had paid for a year’s policy commencing 2024 June 14th, had ‘invited’ me to renew with them at an increased cost this year, but ‘no need to do anything, we’ll do everything for you’ and, crucially, take payment from ‘the debit card you used to pay us last year’ or words to that effect.

Meanwhile Auto Sergei thought otherwise and offered me a policy with Tesco at a hundred pounds less premium: this I accepted and paid Tesco Insurance for the coming 25/26 year.

All I had to do was Log In to My Account at 1st Central Insurance and tell them not to ‘auto renew’ or, indeed, take money from my Lloyds debit card. Simples! Apparently not – here’s the – and I use the word carefully – ‘scam’*.

Once 1st Central Insurance have sent you the notification that they will be auto-renewing and the rest, their log-in to My Account ceases to work and just sends you round and round various Chat Bots and alleged ‘human’ colleagues (Bots 2 and 3), laughingly described by Bot 1 as ‘friendly’, who will ask you repeat all the same ‘security’ questions until we are advised that the system is ‘down’ at the moment, but try again later, only to be sent down the same crazy rabbit-hole and on and on. Finally offering to email me a copy of my policy documents, which they did not do, instead emailing me a copy of their original ‘auto-renewal’- offer, with the same link to ‘My Account’ which did not work, but offered to ‘chat’ with me. I declined. This way, clearly, madness lies.

You’d think it would be a straight forward follow-on task, therefore, to ask Lloyds Bank to decline any requests for payment from these rascals, but, oh, no! Not so fast – as I found out with a previous scam-merchant DG contractor, once the ‘Merchant’ has your debit or credit card authorisation for one payment, they can follow it up as a ‘subscription’ and this you cannot cancel, even if you freeze your card or even get it replaced.

The only way to stop them getting their claws into, essentially, your current account, is by reporting the card as ‘lost or stolen’ – this you can do by a dedicated Lloyds 0800 phone line, thankfully,  which even though another Bot, did the job and cancelled the card with immediate effect.

So, that’s the end of this nightmare, apart from getting a replacement card and telling all my retail contacts about my new number.

*’scam’ – oh yes, I believe it works this way. Policy holder is advised, ‘with notice’ that the payment for renewal will be taken. Subsequently all Log Ins for that customer on their site are disabled, as detailed above. This, after the seemingly endless hours wasted by the hapless not-wishing-to-renew-person, causes them to ‘give-up’ and just allow payment. The cost, to 1st Central of having Bots do all this is virtually nil, the result when it succeeds as it often might, adds to the already very affluent financial persons in the insurance or broking business becoming more so.

 

born_again

JimboMarimbo said:

As reported previously, 1st Central car insurance, with whom I had paid for a year’s policy commencing 2024 June 14th, had ‘invited’ me to renew with them at an increased cost this year, but ‘no need to do anything, we’ll do everything for you’ and, crucially, take payment from ‘the debit card you used to pay us last year’ or words to that effect.

Meanwhile Auto Sergei thought otherwise and offered me a policy with Tesco at a hundred pounds less premium: this I accepted and paid Tesco Insurance for the coming 25/26 year.

All I had to do was Log In to My Account at 1st Central Insurance and tell them not to ‘auto renew’ or, indeed, take money from my Lloyds debit card. Simples! Apparently not – here’s the – and I use the word carefully – ‘scam’*.

Once 1st Central Insurance have sent you the notification that they will be auto-renewing and the rest, their log-in to My Account ceases to work and just sends you round and round various Chat Bots and alleged ‘human’ colleagues (Bots 2 and 3), laughingly described by Bot 1 as ‘friendly’, who will ask you repeat all the same ‘security’ questions until we are advised that the system is ‘down’ at the moment, but try again later, only to be sent down the same crazy rabbit-hole and on and on. Finally offering to email me a copy of my policy documents, which they did not do, instead emailing me a copy of their original ‘auto-renewal’- offer, with the same link to ‘My Account’ which did not work, but offered to ‘chat’ with me. I declined. This way, clearly, madness lies.

You’d think it would be a straight forward follow-on task, therefore, to ask Lloyds Bank to decline any requests for payment from these rascals, but, oh, no! Not so fast – as I found out with a previous scam-merchant DG contractor, once the ‘Merchant’ has your debit or credit card authorisation for one payment, they can follow it up as a ‘subscription’ and this you cannot cancel, even if you freeze your card or even get it replaced.

The only way to stop them getting their claws into, essentially, your current account, is by reporting the card as ‘lost or stolen’ – this you can do by a dedicated Lloyds 0800 phone line, thankfully,  which even though another Bot, did the job and cancelled the card with immediate effect.

So, that’s the end of this nightmare, apart from getting a replacement card and telling all my retail contacts about my new number.

*’scam’ – oh yes, I believe it works this way. Policy holder is advised, ‘with notice’ that the payment for renewal will be taken. Subsequently all Log Ins for that customer on their site are disabled, as detailed above. This, after the seemingly endless hours wasted by the hapless not-wishing-to-renew-person, causes them to ‘give-up’ and just allow payment. The cost, to 1st Central of having Bots do all this is virtually nil, the result when it succeeds as it often might, adds to the already very affluent financial persons in the insurance or broking business becoming more so.

 

All you have to do is tell lloyds to block any further payments. Which they have to do under the Payment Services Directive.
If they take a payment after you have cancelled you have a right (chargeback) to claim the money back 👍

Now that does not cancel the contract. So you do need to contact & cancel the renewal. Even if it means writing to them at their address as per the bottom of their webpage. Just send via 1st class post & get proof of postage. No point wasting money on recorded delivery etc. 
As proof of posting is taken as proof of delivery.

https://help.1stcentralinsurance.com/motor/cancellations/how-do-i-cancel-my-car-insurance

Reporting your card lost/stolen should not stop payments. As retailer can use Visa Account updater (Mastercard have the same) to get the new card details

DullGreyGuy

JimboMarimbo said:

You’d think it would be a straight forward follow-on task, therefore, to ask Lloyds Bank to decline any requests for payment from these rascals, but, oh, no! Not so fast – as I found out with a previous scam-merchant DG contractor, once the ‘Merchant’ has your debit or credit card authorisation for one payment, they can follow it up as a ‘subscription’ and this you cannot cancel, even if you freeze your card or even get it replaced.

The only way to stop them getting their claws into, essentially, your current account, is by reporting the card as ‘lost or stolen’ – this you can do by a dedicated Lloyds 0800 phone line, thankfully,  which even though another Bot, did the job and cancelled the card with immediate effect.

So, that’s the end of this nightmare, apart from getting a replacement card and telling all my retail contacts about my new number.

*’scam’ – oh yes, I believe it works this way. Policy holder is advised, ‘with notice’ that the payment for renewal will be taken. Subsequently all Log Ins for that customer on their site are disabled, as detailed above. This, after the seemingly endless hours wasted by the hapless not-wishing-to-renew-person, causes them to ‘give-up’ and just allow payment. The cost, to 1st Central of having Bots do all this is virtually nil, the result when it succeeds as it often might, adds to the already very affluent financial persons in the insurance or broking business becoming more so.

Lloyds gave you wrong information but maybe has saved you from yourself...

Lloyds can cancel the CPA and stop future payments to the merchant, they have given you wrong information by saying they can't. Cancelling your old card will have done nothing as the Visa and Mastercard updater service will simply tell anyone who had a CPA on the old number what the new number is. 

They have actually saved you though because cancelling payment does not stop the renewal. That will happen, they will then take payment and if that fails it will go into the void for non-payment route. At that point you then have to either cancel the policy and pay the fee or allow them to void the policy and declare for the rest of your life that you have had insurance cancelled for non-payment which will have a much larger annual impact on your premiums than the cancellation fee. 

So how you've left it at the moment the policy will renew and you will be charged for it, you need to follow the cancellation process as outlined above. 

JimboMarimbo

"Cancelling your old card will have done nothing as the Visa and Mastercard updater service will simply tell anyone who had a CPA on the old number what the new number is"

Worrying indeed

"All you have to do is tell lloyds to block any further payments. Which they have to do under the Payment Services Directive"

Despite hours and days spent trying to get Lloyds to specifically BLOCK payment to this company, they have not responded with any suitable linked online route.- let alone acknowledged that there is such a thing as a CPA or that it applies to me and 1stC.

On the bright side, however, 1st Central sent me the required notification that they 'had been unable to take payment' and the policy is not renewed and thus legally not in force as far as the Road Traffic Act's provisions require..Direct quote from their email follows.

"Your car insurance policy was due to automatically renew on 15/06/2025, however, we weren’t able to complete the payment needed to set up your cover.

 

Your policy expired on 14/06/2025 at 23:59 and your car is no longer insured with 1st Central."

So that's that - I hope.

DullGreyGuy

JimboMarimbo said:

"Cancelling your old card will have done nothing as the Visa and Mastercard updater service will simply tell anyone who had a CPA on the old number what the new number is"

Worrying indeed

Not at all, CPA requires a valid transaction to have been made first under regular payment terms, only after that can a CPA be created. 

Before card updater existed it was hit and miss if someone has been a victim of fraud so their card cancelled if subsequent payments to legitimate companies setup before the fraud could continue to take payment or not. Inevitably victims were then hit by late payment charges or cancelled services; card updater resolved that such that legitimate companies the customer has authorised to take ongoing payments could continue to do so and did have further issues to deal with on top of being a victim of fraud/theft. 

JimboMarimbo said:

"All you have to do is tell lloyds to block any further payments. Which they have to do under the Payment Services Directive"

Despite hours and days spent trying to get Lloyds to specifically BLOCK payment to this company, they have not responded with any suitable linked online route.- let alone acknowledged that there is such a thing as a CPA or that it applies to me and 1stC.

Most banks appear behind the curve on CPAs and it needs to be done over the phone or live chat/messenger without a way for a consumer to self serve online. This may be because the CPA is a cruder tool than DD and its not possible to cancel "a" CPA but instead you have to cancel any CPA to the particular merchant so if you had two policies with them and wanted to only cancel one you cannot do that via the CPA. They maybe want to communicate this to customers rather than allowing them to cancel themselves and it have unintended consequences.