Last year my car insurance, with a highly rated mutual, suffered a substantial increase. It was fortuitous therefore that they rang me this year just before renewal to try to sell household insurance. I told them they were wasting their time as I would be cancelling the car insurance as it was much too expensive and gave them a quote I had received from a competitor. A week later the renewal arrived and the cost was 40 per cent below last year's, easily beating the competitor.