The biggest scam in all this is not those poor unfortunates who never bothered to read the contracts they were signing (why wouldn't you if it's your own money?) or take advantage of the cancellation period after they had more time to consider.
No, it's these rude, persistant and outright untruthful third party claims companies that constantly phone you up, don't have the common courtesy to tell you who they are before launching into their spiel, assume you have a problem without even asking - assume you have PPI without even asking - and put the phone down very abruptly if they think you are not going to sign up with them... only for someone else from the same company to phone the next day. Now they are not even calling personally but using auto-dial pre-recoreded messages to spout their guff.
Oh and if you do sign up with them and if they do win compensation, they keep 40%+ for themselves, for doing very little other than passing your name and address details which you could have done yourself. Watchdog recently highlighted their scams but most people won't have seen it and they are so prevalent it has become a multi-million pound industry. The cost just of processing all the claims, genuine and not genuine must be massive.
Eventually it is everyone who uses the services who pays for it as all costs will eventually be passed on to the consumer.
I hate this ambulance-chasing, claim for the slighest incident real or imagined and magnify its effects to the maximum culture that seems to be expanding exponentially.
Motor-insurance premium rises as a result of all the fake claims is a prime example, pricing many people out of insurance. Don't think this will mean they will stop driving - no, they wil drive uninsured and if you are ever knocked down by such a driver there will be no insurance to claim against for a genuine claim.
Ah well - nearly weekend - and more of those parasitic b*****d phone calls to ignore.