13 September 2005
Credit card users must take care when deciding whether to purchase insurance, a leading charity has said.
According to Citizens Advice (CA), British credit card owners are being charged £5 billion per year on expensive payment protection insurance (PPI) policies that they don't really need.
The charity also reckons that a whopping 85 per cent of people who do claim on their insurance get turned away.
The CA says that people who buy policies for circumstances such as illness or redundancy are most often those who are least likely to qualify for a payout.
A "super complaint" to the Office of Fair Trading over PPI is being mooted, the Daily Mail says.
David Harker, CA chief executive, said: "At best the excessive cost for minimal benefits makes it bad value for many people, at worst misselling means the most vulnerable people are parted from large amounts of money under false pretences and left even more exposed to debt.
"This is particularly worrying at a time when personal debt levels are escalating."
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