Chapter 1381: The Process of Being Scammed

The Process of Being Scammed

I only found out that night that I'd been scammed.

This is how it happened.

My car insurance was due to expire on January 5th, and starting in December, a whole bunch of insurance companies kept calling me, pushing renewals and wanting to give me quotes.

I hung up on a lot of those calls over those few days, but on the 10th, for some reason, I picked up two calls from insurance companies, and I told them to send me a quote so I could take a look.

Because last year my car insurance premium was almost 8,000, and I have two cars. After I paid the premium, I got curious and asked my renewal specialist for my other old car, and only then found out that the insurance she'd arranged for me could have given back 1,500 in cash!

Her place was a 4S dealership, so it was trustworthy.

But since I'd already bought it, I could only eat that loss, and figured I'd ask her to handle the renewal the following year.

Then at the start of the month when I asked her, she said she couldn't handle the renewal this year — I forgot what the reason was — so I figured I'd just go back to last year's company.

Right at that moment, two insurance companies got in touch with me, so I had them add me on and give me a quote.

Every year, whenever my car insurance is about to expire, a pile of insurance companies call.

This year I also thought it was perfectly normal.

The two companies that quoted me both offered over 1,000 more discount than the official price, and both claimed to be Pacific Insurance.

My car was insured with Pacific Insurance last year, so I figured they were all Pacific, and since there was a discount of over 1,000, I just picked one at random and that was fine.

After all, my old-car renewal specialist had also told me the year before that she'd give back 1,500.

If you can get a discount, nobody wants to spend that extra 1,000-plus yuan — I already spent it last year.

Then I got fed up with the insurance calls, and figured I should just renew quickly so I wouldn't keep getting harassed.

Just like that, two days later, on the 12th, the two salespeople gave me nearly the same quote, so I picked one and bought the policy.

When I paid, I even paid special attention — the payment page showed "Pacific Insurance Online Renewal," and only then did I pay.

But half an hour after I finished paying, the salesperson told me that the mandatory traffic insurance had to be queued up and that he'd get me insured the next day.

The next day, he told me again that Pacific couldn't process the mandatory traffic insurance for the moment, and that he'd switch me to People's Insurance. I was already pretty upset, so I gave him a piece of my mind.

I said, how could someone as unreliable as him possibly fail to get me insured? There's never been a case where it couldn't be insured.

Then he called me and kept stringing me along, saying there were benefits to buying insurance from two different companies, and that the mandatory traffic insurance was paid to the government anyway.

If anything happened, when the time came I only needed to file under the mandatory traffic insurance, no need to file under the commercial policy, and that would save me from an increase in commercial premium the following year.

I got pretty tired of him going on and on, so I just let it go and told him to hurry up and renew it for me. The commercial policy was already bought, so if it had to be split between two companies, so be it.

After the purchase he issued both policies to me. I just saved them, glanced at them, and didn't bother to look at them carefully at all.

Because in recent years I've never actually looked at my policies carefully…

Before that, I'd always bought through the specialist at the 4S dealership. The first year or two I still looked, but after that I never looked at the policies at all. In any case, in recent years when I've had a few claims, calling the official number always got a quick response. (Veteran drivers rarely file claims.)

So how did I find out I'd been scammed?

Because ever since I bought the insurance, insurance companies kept calling me every day to get me to renew, and I was baffled.

That evening, the official Pacific specialist called me and asked if I'd renewed, and I was baffled.

I said, didn't I already renew with you Pacific Insurance?

The Pacific specialist told me that, on his end, he could only see that I'd renewed the mandatory traffic insurance, but not the commercial policy.

But I was completely dumbfounded. I said the mandatory traffic insurance I renewed with People's Insurance, and the commercial policy I renewed with you Pacific Insurance.

The Pacific specialist kept stressing to me that he'd checked my car insurance records, and that I had definitely, positively only renewed one mandatory traffic insurance policy.

Then around 5 p. m., I left my meal half-eaten and stayed on the line with the Pacific specialist. The Pacific specialist helped me identify my renewal policy, and it wasn't Pacific Insurance at all.

He said he'd run into a few customers before who'd also been scammed on their insurance.

Then I called Pacific Insurance's official number again, and confirmed once more — my car had not been renewed.

My heart went cold. I knew I'd been scammed, so I quickly called 110 to report it to the police.

The police said what happened to me didn't constitute fraud.

Because this person did buy me the mandatory traffic insurance, he just didn't buy me the commercial policy. And after I found out I'd been scammed, I went looking for him, and when I asked him questions he could answer me — he didn't just vanish.

Fraud would mean the money was taken and nothing was bought, and the person couldn't be reached.

The police told me to call the other party and have him provide the company's qualifications and a claims contact number.

There was a claims contact number on his policy, but it started with 400 — it wasn't Pacific Insurance's.

I called the 400 number, and there was a voice prompt inside that claimed to be the Pacific claims line and so on…

The other party replied that he was off work now, out handling something, and would go to the office tomorrow to give me the qualifications.

I kept recording and asking him, are you Pacific Insurance?

He kept insisting to me that he was Pacific Insurance, just that he was online, and said online and offline were different. He also gave me a claims reporting number starting with 400.

I may be dumb, but I'm not that dumb.

I said, "One Pacific Insurance company — online and offline really completely different? The claims reporting numbers can even be different?"

He just said that if anything happened, I should go ahead and call the 400 number, there'd be a dedicated person to handle it, or I could just contact him directly.

He said I'd been calling him nonstop just now, and wasn't he picking up, and wasn't he replying to me promptly?

I said, "I called the official number and checked — my car simply wasn't renewed."

He kept insisting to me that mine was already insured, just a transfer of policy, and that after January 5th the car insurance would be renewed, and that I should wait until after January 5th and check again and I'd see.

I said, "I just asked you, and you also said for sure that you're Pacific Insurance. Same company — why would there need to be a transfer of policy?"

He had no way to answer, and just told me to wait until after January 5th and check, that it would show up on its own then, that he was Pacific Insurance, and that my insurance was definitely bought.

Still making excuses!

Hearing all this, I already knew — he was probably some no-name small insurance company, using Pacific's name to scam car owners into renewing.

And his insurance was genuinely bought, it just had to take effect on the 5th. Once it took effect, I figured I wouldn't be able to cancel even if I wanted to.

On the phone just now I firmly demanded a cancellation, and the other party also told me he could cancel it for me, but that he had to wait until tomorrow after work started — the finance department was already off — and that they'd charge a handling fee of three or four hundred.

Damn it!

Now I can only wait and see if he'll refund me tomorrow. If he can refund it, then losing three or four hundred is just losing it—consider it a lesson learned.

When I was communicating with the Taibao agent, the Taibao agent also said what he did was very convincing—the online payment all showed up as Taibao.

He even bought me the mandatory traffic insurance. That way, if I ever had an accident, the traffic police could look up and see that this car did have mandatory traffic insurance paid. The traffic police side can't check commercial insurance.

If I don't have an accident, then naturally they have nothing to worry about.

Just now the Taibao agent also used Tianyancha to look up the official seal in the bottom right corner of that policy.

That something Taibao Online something Sichuan Limited Company—its registration date was the end of November 2024.

It's just that Tianyancha can find this company, but it should be one of those, um, fake business license type of shell companies.

I mean, this kind of thing can't be said to not be a company—Tianyancha really can find it.

But its registered capital is 100,000. Which insurance company can operate with just 100,000 in registered capital?

Lately I've also been running low on energy. Year-end is here, there's a lot of busy stuff, no time to pay attention to this kind of small matter, and I didn't look at the policy carefully, so I just got swindled like that.

Who told you the waters inside insurance run so deep. My old car's 4S dealership renewal has always had cashback, and last year they also said they'd give me cashback.

That's roughly how the whole thing went. I haven't even eaten yet—let me edit this first and tell everyone about it. It's not that I deliberately wanted to ask for leave.

Now I'll eat something, pull myself together, and get to writing.

Damn, the whole getting-swindled story took over 2,000 words to write.