What's the worst that can go wrong with a washing machine? Your whites going pink because of a rogue red sock? Discovering you left a ￡20 note in your jeans, and it's now a mush? For Londoner Peter Day, it was far worse. This month he found that he had been paying for a warranty for 23 years – even though he last used the washing machine 20 years ago.Day is an extreme victim of a common problem: not checking your bank statements in full and failing to spot direct debits you should have cancelled long ago.Back in the early 90s, Day, a retired trader, took out an insurance policy with Domestic & General to cover his new washer – and he has been paying ever since.The matter came to light only when he decided to close a Barclays current account. He estimates he has paid the equivalent of almost ￡3,000 in today's money to cover a machine that could be replaced for around ￡350.
Day left the machine in question in his home when he moved in 1993 and has no idea what happened to it – most likely it was scrapped years ago. His story serves as a wake-up call to anyone who does not check their bank statements properly. However, it also raises questions about the behaviour of warranty providers, which are happy to keep collecting premiums for products that cannot possibly still be in use.Day says he took out the D&G policy, which promised to repair his machine if it broke down, in the days when white goods were more expensive. It was one of a number of machines he insured with the firm before, he says, he "woke up" to what poor value such policies can be.
Twenty years ago he moved and left the insured machine to the flat's new owner. He thought no more about it until earlier this year when, wanting to streamline his financial affairs, he closed his little-used Barclays account. The bank asked what he wanted to do about the monthly direct debit he had been paying for 20 years, which had risen to ￡12.05 a month, or ￡144.60 a year. A washing machine can now be bought new from around ￡350."The flat I left had a shared area where the mail was dumped. I imagine that each year D&G wrote to me to raise the price, but the letter probably lay untouched in the communal area. When I contacted the firm they had no record of a Peter Day living at my current address. Only when I mentioned the address that I left back in 1993 could they find me. D&G had been renewing a policy every year for which I had no need."
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