Modern life = bend over and take it consumer.

I've had my little car now almost a year and it's time to renew the insurance.

Because I hadn't owned a car for 7 years previous, I had to live with the fact I had zero no claims bonus and ended up paying out £ 730.

I started to go on all these instant quote sites and again despite now having one year's NCD, some of the utterly ridiculous quotes I'm getting.

I'm 61 in a few weeks, the car has an alarm and immobiliser, it isn't parked overnight in a war zone and I do 14 miles a day. I've no convictions blah blah blah.

I've been getting figures of £ 700 - £ 1000 pales into insignificance by Age UK £ 4,500 and SAGA (both catering for older drivers) £ 8500 that's £ 130 a week to drive to Brownhills and back.

I've also noticed that prices change day to day, when I repeated my details by accident on one site and got two different figures.

Also, I typed the details into my current insurer's site and got a figure of £ 495. Ah, that's for my loyalty I thought as I filed the quote being the lowest I'd found.

Saturday morning, I opened the post and I saw a renewal notice from Hastings, my current provider. £ 691

I realise it's a competitive industry, but these jackals do themselves no favours with wide boy practices like changing prices on the same set of input details on a daily basis. The risk doesn't change.

As for loyalty, you can forget that one too.

Rather like my pet hate industry recruitment, these guys have algorithms or something to work everything their own way and give little to fuck all to the customer.

Looks like I'll be shifting my loyalty to Admiral at £ 475.

I tried to call Hastings and question the renewal price which was also a complete waste of time. Listened to a load of flannel about calls being recorded and how they are answerable to so and so, then got cut off.

Went through it all again and was left on hold for 25 minutes before giving up. Obviously the renewals department is overwhelmed with customers either renewing their inflated policies or complaining, let's guess shall we.

All insurance is about risk and I reckon with 40 years driving experience only marred by a nudge in traffic 10 yrs ago resulting in a lady's broken number plate, my crash record is nil. If I was doing 400 miles or more a day on today's race tracks like the M25, I confess I'd be a higher risk, but a 7am trip to Brownhills from Walsall and back at 4pm certainly reduces my risk.

The car is hardly desirable to a thieving jackal, when there's at least two Jaguars, three Mercedes and a Lexus parked on the same estate all of course covered by CCTV cameras.

So forgive me insurance professionals if I conclude: GREEDY, CALLOUS, BASTARDS.