When the year began, I was a listening ear to Your Problems, my column for the Observer. Now I’m a Guardian consumer champion. Reinvention is always bracing. My old life was spent wrestling airlines, insurance firms and energy providers intent on plundering readers’ piggy banks. My new life? Wrestling airlines, insurance firms and energy providers intent on plundering readers’ piggy banks.
It is a comfort in this era of seismic shifts to know some things remain constant. You can bank on energy firms to chill your marrow with billing psychodramas and phantom accounts. Meanwhile, certainty is still the business model of insurers: many would say you can be certain that if you damage your car, or yourself, your provider will look for a reason to stall over your claim.
It is an age-old tradition for airlines and accommodation providers to take your cash for a booking, but actual flights and actual beds sometimes appear to be considered an optional extra.
This year, I have discovered where you can buy a takeaway coffee for £100; the mysterious reasons why guests at Travelodge can be shunted by night to motorway service stations; and what “for ever” means in the banking sector (about two decades in Santander’s lexicon, apparently).
I have investigated how long HM Revenue and Customs reckons it needs to make an agreed bank transfer – 33 weeks – and why some retired teachers have to prove each year they are not dead.
At this time of year I like to acknowledge those organisations that have worked so hard to keep their customers at arm’s length, and to keep me in a job.
Applause, please, for the winners of Anna’s dishonours awards 2025.
Sensitivity ambassador Dead customers are so much easier to deal with than live ones. Perhaps that is why Three (slogan: “Live your best phone life”) suggested CF “kill off” her sick father when she wanted to change the ownership of her mobile phone contract. CF’s account had been set up with him as the principal account holder because she was then a teenager at the time. Three’s customer service team does not have a process for this, but its bereavement service does. Helpfully, it suggested it mark her father down as deceased so it could oblige her request to make her the primary account holder for her own mobile phone. That could, Three warned, affect his credit rating, but it promised to tell credit agencies that he was still alive after the deed was done. Three later said it would review its processes a goodwill payment.
Good hygiene Sex has bedevilled Guardian-reading holidaymakers. An elderly couple discovered that strangers had been at it in their hotel room while they were at a Christmas gathering. The evidence? Condoms, knickers and a paper party hat in the bedroom. Premier Inn (slogan: “Force for Good”) apologised for “any inconvenience” and declared the case closed, before delicate questioning from the Guardian prompted a refund. Then there is Vrbo (“Where families travel better together”), which told a young family who found their holiday rental was a bloodstained sex den that their complaint was “minor” and refused compensation until the Guardian stepped in.
Good Samaritan Everyone knows Ryanair has a heart of … solid granite. FB, a doctor, reached her departure gate late because she had stopped to help an injured passenger. Ryanair (“Great Care”) refused to let her board the waiting plane and charged her a £100 admin fee to rebook. Could it not waive the fee as a goodwill gesture, given the circumstances? No it could not, it insisted, since it is its passengers’ responsibility to be punctual (even if it means not helping bleeding pensioners, it seems).
Nurture prize A close race, this one. London’s Southwark council (“United to Serve”) deserves a shoutout for leaving a 91-year-old cancer patient with damp, mould and insects for a year while it pondered how to address a leak elsewhere in the block. But the housing association L&Q (“Our vision is that everyone deserves a quality home that gives them the chance to live a better life”) went one step further when, with no warning, it left residents without running water for 12 days while it belatedly fixed a leak.
Philosopher’s prize Airbnb (“Belong Anywhere”) must share this with one of its hosts. When a 100-year-old oak tree fell on to a French gite, narrowly missing the occupants (who’d been having breakfast on the terrace minutes earlier), damaging the property’s roof and smashing their hire car windscreen, the host refused to refund their aborted stay. “You have chosen to remember the worry and trauma instead of celebrating a unique memory,” she told them. Airbnb was similarly sanguine. “We understand this may have caused some inconvenience to you,” it said, then closed their complaint – minus refund – and told them: “Keep safe. Stay healthy.” (It eventually issued a full refund along with a £500 voucher after our intervention).
Social justice warrior Where do you potentially face a court for confusing an “O” with a zero? The London borough of Ealing, which shields its residents from harmful forces without fear or favour. When a visiting driver confused an O on his car number plate with a zero and entered the wrong digit into a parking app, the council gave him the option of an £80 fine or legal action. Os and 0s are identical on car number plates and the driver had paid for his parking. That did not wash with Ealing, nor did government guidance on parking penalty enforcement, which requires councils to exercise discretion “sensibly and reasonably”. It insisted he cough up out of “fair consideration … to motorists who comply with all the parking regulations”.
Corporate contrition No one feels your pain like big business. In fact, it has adopted a platitude to encapsulate its empathy when it realises it has let you down. “We’re sorry for any inconvenience” can be rolled out when the civil service pension scheme managed by the outsourcing company Capita demands a retiree refund £25,000 worth of overpayments it had accidentally made over 11 years, or Virgin Atlantic fails to refund the cost of a honeymoon it cancelled. It meets the need when TSB confuses a victim of ID fraud with the fraudster, applies fraud markers to his name and causes the closure of his bank accounts. Inconvenient it is indeed when Airbnb bans you because it has seemingly decided you are associated with the criminal underworld; or when Sky fails to cancel the package of a family whose house was wrecked by a gas explosion next door.
AA intrepid travel
This award is for the AA itself. “Join us on our journey” it invites. But one woman’s car made the journey without her for six months after the AA towed it to an approved garage for repair. It was returned – only after she reported it as stolen – with a coating of bird dirt, a £70 penalty charge notice for a parking breach, and 15,000 extra miles on the clock. Reassuringly for other AA members, the association told me its relationship with the garage in question was now “under review”.
Bereavement support
Insurers have collectively earned this prize. Their response, when informed of a policyholder’s death, can be to hit the bereaved partner with a huge hike in premiums for home and car cover. Why? One provider was disarmingly frank with a new widow: now she lives alone, it explained, her home is more at risk of break-ins.
