Travel: Card tricks

WITH THE Channel tunnel now less than four months away from opening, one might have hoped that the British insurance industry would have managed to come up with a simple, standard way of handling Continental motoring insurance. But angry letters are still arriving on this subject following the flurry of correspondence last year from readers complaining about the differing attitudes of insurance companies.

As you may recall, some charge for Green Cards - which are necessary to provide fully comprehensive cover abroad - other companies do not. Generally speaking, it is the direct-sell companies with the cheap premiums that make the charge. Warren Hooton of Southend, for example, writes to say that, on top his annual fully comprehensive insurance policy charge of pounds 580, he is having to pay up to pounds 900 extra each year for Green Card charges: for example, pounds 29.50 for five days in Normandy and pounds 120 for eight weeks in Portugal.

The message seems clear. If you are being charged for a Green Card, tell your insurance company that unless it waives the charges, you will take your business elsewhere. By the end of the year, perhaps all Green Card charges will have become a thing of the past (and we will have properly become a part of Europe).