Idiot. More fool you. Serves you right. What did you expect? These were some of the things people said to me when I told them about something I had done, or rather not done, or rather – as I saw it – had done to me. I thought I was the victim. Others just thought me a bit of a pillock.

For years I had breakdown cover with the same well-known name. Let’s call it SMBOBU Recovery. Skilled Mechanics But Otherwise a Bit Unscrupulous. I can’t tell you how long I’d been with SMBOBU Recovery because I can’t bear to look. I never had any problem with the service, not least because I never broke down. To be fair, the one time I remember calling on them, when my motorbike’s battery went flat, the bloke turned up promptly and played a blinder. He couldn’t get at the battery terminals to clip on his charger cables, so he executed a devilishly clever manoeuvre he called chopsticks. This involved poking a couple of long screwdrivers on to the terminals and clipping his clips on to them. Nice work, credit where it’s due, etc.

My admiration might be why, when it came to what my cover was costing me, I took my eye off the ball. And in this world, in this iteration of capitalism, taking your eye off the ball costs you dear. I suppose I assumed that, yes, I was probably paying a bit more than new customers, but not so much more as to warrant getting into any faff fighting with a website or a call centre to get a better deal with........

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