Do you insure your caravan with the Caravan Club?

In case any caravan enthusiasts happen to read this blog then here is a tip for you!

When we first bought our caravan we thought it best to insure it with The Caravan Club - safe and sound we thought. I fixed up the insurance on the telephone. When the documents eventually came through I happened to notice that the insurance was dependent on us storing the caravan at a Gold Award Storage site. This was not mentioned during my discussions with the caravan Club representative on the phone. There happened to be one within 5 miles of where we live so I enquired about vacancies. The cost seemed expensive to me - £520 per year compared to probably half that at other smaller storage sites with supposedly less security! It seemed that we had to comply with the conditions of the insurance so I reluctantly went along with it. We had to enter into a contract with the storage firm for a minimum of 12 months.

During our stay I noticed one or two dents appearing in our caravan which I was sure were not due to us and also I became infuriated with all the lorries that kept appearing in the gaps between caravans! It seemed that the proprietor was making much more money from buying and selling Tesco refrigerated lorries than he was from storing caravans. I got fed up with the place and decided to look elsewhere.

This week I have located another storage facility on a farm just down the road from the one I refer to. Its £282 per year! Quite a saving and seems fairly secure and was recommended to us by some friends. I was worried though that we might save on the storage fees but then find ourselves paying much more in insurance? On calling the Caravan Club and informing them of my decision to move storage facilities I was shocked to discover how much the insurance would go up! The increase is £9.99! Not £9.99 per month but £9.99 per year! I couldn't believe it. Even more amazing was they didn't even want to know where I was storing the caravan! One minute I seemed to be being forced to use a Gold Award storage site and the next minute it seemed I could park my caravan absolutely anywhere in the UK for an extra £9.99 a year! It doesn't seem to make sense to me!