Car insurance companies are not the only businesses to take advantage of customer inertia.

As long as it's easier to do nothing than it is to pick up the telephone or switch on a computer, then firms will continue to reap the benefit of our reluctance to question how much something costs, why it costs that much and whether or not we can get it cheaper.

Too many people 'auto-renew' policies (and subscriptions, and payments, and services of every kind imaginable) simply because doing nothing is the easy option. You can't really blame the companies for taking advantage of one of the main failings of the human race.

Laziness.

When you choose - and it is your choice - to go for an 'introductory offer' that involves signing up over the phone or online, the payments or direct debits or whatever will continue to be made to the company concerned unless you remember to cancel within the free 'trial' period. It's obvious why this seemingly duplicitous business model is so popular; the company gets a regular payment (an absolute godsend for cashflow) ad infinitum (and frequently at a higher rate than the headline one) unless the customer cancels.

Or rather makes the effort to get off his fat arse and pick up the phone, which is mostly what we don't do.

You could argue that the onus lies with the businesses concerned, but since we live in a capitalist system, their primary objective is to make themselves as profitable as possible. And for the greater part, they are doing absolutely nothing illegal.

You might not like it, and you might wish they were altogether more altruistic, or up front, or straightforward, or transparent, but that's not the way it is.

Like it or not the responsibility lies with us to make sure we aren't being taken advantage of. You may think that what the firms do is unethical, or sneaky, or underhand, but often as not there's a hollow ring of hypocrisy to our affront, and that's simply because we can't be bothered to do anything about it.

We want everything done for us.

Yes, it's a pain that we need to check, double check and check again that we are getting the best deal on things, but often it involves nothing more than sitting in front of a computer for a few minutes, and after all it's not as if sitting in front of a computer is particularly onerous; millions of us fritter away countless hours doing exactly that, and we do it out of choice.

Even if checking involves ringing someone up, it's not as if you have to walk to a freezing cold phone box three quarters of a mile away and stand in a puddle of stale wee while you do it. Not these days.

We're the ones who need to be on the ball.

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