I’M slowly forming the view that car insurance is a load of rubbish – designed to bamboozle and confuse you with illogical rules and policies.

This comes after two nightmarish incidents in the last few weeks, one of which happened to me and one to a friend.

First my friend had his house in High Wycombe burgled while he and his family slept in their beds one night.

But not content with just raiding the house, the crooks also grabbed the keys to the family car, stuffed the loot in it and drove off.

Just when my friend thought it couldn’t get any worse, he discovered the car had been abandoned and destroyed by fire.

He’d only just bought this motor in February after shopping around carefully for a year to find a reliable budget car.

He purchased it from a reputable garage and, after he put new tyres on it, it was worth around £3,500.

He was especially pleased because he had negotiated a decent warranty.

But little of this counted with his insurers who tapped in the make, year and mileage into their computer and told him they would give him £2,200. This was irrespective of the fact he’d only bought it earlier this year for a lot more.

They told him his warranty could not be taken into account and that the price he’d paid was irrelevant.

Luckily, there was a white knight riding over the hill – namely me, and I didn’t even realise.

After I had innocently offered to look into doing a story on his troubles, he informed the insurers he had a newspaper friend who might be in contact with them soon.

That appeared to do the trick because the offer suddenly shot up to £3,000 and he settled.

But the episode hardly surprises me after my personal woes a few weeks ago when I changed my car.

I had been with the same insurers for many years and was due to renew. They sent me reminder letters, but I let my policy lapse for two days.

The reason was that I exchanged my old car shortly before the old policy ended and there was no point in renewing until my new one had been delivered.

As soon as I took charge of the new vehicle (complete with a temporary cover note from the seller, I must add), I rang my insurers and told them I was ready to renew.

They told me I couldn’t because my policy had lapsed so I was now counted as new business. And all new business had to go to their new underwriters. They gave me a fresh number to dial and, after a bit of toing and froing, I eventually secured my new policy.

However, when it arrived a week later in the post, I realised they had spelt my name incorrectly as ‘Steven Cohens’.

I rang to correct the error and was stunned to learn that my insurance was possibly now invalid because they couldn’t insure me under the name Steven Cohen.

The call centre worker told me to dial another number to sort it out but then admitted that this number was closed until Monday morning. As it was Friday night, this possibly meant I had to go without insurance for two whole days.

When I pressed him as to why he couldn’t insure me, he replied he wasn’t allowed to say.

After much persuasion, a manager was summoned to the phone. He explained that as I was an existing customer of the previous underwriter, contractually the new underwriters (his firm) couldn’t take me as new business for two months. I had only been insured in error because they had thought my name was S Cohens and I didn’t come up on their records.

I retorted that the old firm didn’t actually want me either and that all I cared about was being insured. He agreed to give me cover for a week to tide me over.

The next day, I phoned the original underwriters and tried explaining the saga to them. They rang the new underwriters to sort it out, but apparently there was no record of me.

Happily, just as I was about to tear all my hair out, these old underwriters agreed to insure me under one of their policies, which I’d tried in fact to take out in the first place. I was confused but relieved.

So I went ahead, purchased the cover from them, and got an immediate refund from the S Cohens company who, funnily enough, were happy to give me every penny back immediately with no admin fee.

I reckon they had me down for a troublemaker or a nutter and wanted to see the back of me. And no, I didn’t even need to tell them I had a friend in the local press who was going to do a story on them.