Insurance can be an extremely lucrative business. This is largely because the product that is offered (cover in the event of x circumstance) is priced in order to ensure the statistical likelihood that the insurance business offering the service will make a return. Naturally this makes some consumers resent paying insurance premiums, and this resentment at being exploited can make some people cancel their insurance plans. This is particularly true for peripheral insurance areas (such as breakdown cover or mobile phone insurance), as opposed to ‘core’ insurance areas (such as household contents insurance or medical insurance).
However tempting it might be, cancelling an insurance plan is rarely a good idea. Sod’s law dictates that the minute you decide to abrogate an insurance contract is the minute an unlikely tragedy will befall you. In particular, many motorists who have never experienced the benefits are likely to be tempted to cancel their car or motorbike breakdown plans rather than continue coughing up on the off chance something goes wrong – for most people with a reasonably new vehicle, a breakdown is a once in a blue moon occurrence.
Nevertheless, breaking down at the side of the road without adequate insurance cover can very quickly become a nightmare scenario. The cost of retrieval alone can be prohibitively high, and in the case that your vehicle has experienced a serious and costly fault, the costs associated with a single breakdown can quickly pass the £1000 mark. If this is a sum you can afford to spend on an unpredictable occurrence then perhaps cancelling your insurance plan is a good option – on the other hand if this sounds too expensive to sustain, you are probably better of paying a regular and affordable sum into an insurance plan than taking the risk that something might go wrong. Making poor breakdown choices is easily done and difficult to remedy.