Now--you go onto a price comparison site, get directed to the cheapest deal-and by the time you added the absolute essentials-another £150 or even £200 has been added to the final bill

That is another thing that annoys me, You go to these comparison sites and put in all the details and the required cover i.e. with protected no claims, cover for uninsured losses etc. Then you get the quotes but, when you look they are quoting you for insurance without the bits you asked for. When I question one of the companies about this the answer was "we wouldn't be the cheapest if we quoted you for what you asked for".

In my opinion the insurance companies all seem to be 'Chancers', they send you a renewal price at the maximum they think you will suffer and if you call to say your going with another company that is cheaper they almost instantly can drop their price.

I sympathise with people's frustration over buying or renewing car insurance. However, the fact remains that if you're patient (yes - it will cost you time) you can save money. There being a limited amount it is actually possible to save, one can assume that the poor sods who haven't the patience or time end up by paying more and thereby subsidise the rest of us.

My renewal quote is always way higher than last year's premium. I shop around, phone up my current insurer and ask if they're interested in beating or at least matching what I've found elsewhere. Mostly they will drop their price a lot. If it's only a partial reduction, I decide whether it's worth the hassle to change. More than once I've told them that if they can't do any better I'm off. It takes an hour or two at most.

Cheap flights are different, I think. You don't have to buy fast boarding (what's the point, now that seating is allocated by nearly every airline?), you can bring sandwiches or eat beforehand unless the flight is very long (we have flown to the Canaries for several years now - four hours or so - and have never bought a meal on board); my wife and I are both tall, but we manage with normal seating. It's like car insurance in one respect, which is that you have to spend some time doing it, but air travel is nowadays incredibly cheap.