It's time that motor insurance companies and brokers were investigated by the Trading Standards Office

For some years I have been driving a small van as personal transport not because I use it for business reasons. I simply prefer the convenience of it. Imagine how difficult it is to take an old cooker, say, to the local tip in a car. In the days when I went fishing all my gear would stow quite comfortably in the back without fuss. And I will admit that I have occasionally parked in a loading bay with relative impunity.

I have also for a considerable number of years used the same insurance broker - a large nationwide chain which I shall call Swinton to save any doubt or confusion - and I have stuck with them in spite of their use of a cold calling agency to offer me home insurance and such like at ungodly hours of the day and night. However they know me and I know them etc; better the devil you know and all those old saws.

When I first took out insurance for the van I expressed surprise at the cost and the chap in the office told me that it was because I had to have commercial insurance with a van. When I repeated that I was only going to use it for private reasons, he said that insurance companies only do commercial insurance for vans and that "it costs more to insure a van than a car". I had to like it or lump it. I coughed up and drove several vans over the next few years.

Now my current van has reached the end of its life and I cannot find a suitable replacement locally. An MOT would cost me a lot more than the old thing is worth. I live in a coastal area which is extremely detrimental to a vehicle's undersides and my local black hand gang have informed me that there is nothing left to weld new metal to underneath. So it is out with the old and into a conventional saloon car.

I rang up my usual branch of Swinton to ask for a quote and was informed that I would be paying about £75 more than I had been for the van. At that point I got tired of speaking to him as my phone connection is appalling out here in the boonies and I sat down to think about it.

Deciding it would be better to talk to one of these functionaries face to face I jumped in the jam jar (or jar jan as the case may be) and went to a local branch of the same brokers. They came up with a similar figure and when I protested I was told that it "costs more to insure a car than a van" Of course I then told her what my usual broker had told me when insuring a van for me for the first time. To which she answered that it was all down to "personal experience" In other words just because my usual broker finds that vans are more expensive than cars and this lady finds the opposite, I have to sit quietly and pay the difference in both cases.

Now I am certain that they are really just making the whole thing up as they go along and that is surely a business practice worthy of official investigation.