Hi John,
Working in the payments industry, I'll try and pass on some tips.
First - Sentinel are backed by Cornhill - they are a big company with a decent reputation, so there is no way this is deliberate. Just an innocent co*k up - probably someone loading the wrong file, or same file 2 days running. It happens, people make mistakes. Sure someone is probably getting a kicking for it.
As for the policy itself - 70 seems a high price to pay for card insurance? I pay aroudn £24 a year, and thats purely for a (bank provided) service to register all my cards / passport etc so I can cancel them all with one call should I lose my wallet / get robbed abroad. Most of the cover, that policies like Sentinel offer, is already provided by credit card issuers and your standard house insurance. So unless you've got cover on a very valuable wallet that houses it all, or cover for carrying several grand in cash then it's perhaps worth checking that you are not just buying cover from them when you are already covered by other policies.
