WWhen the year began, I was a listening ear to your problems, my column for the Observer. Now I’m Guardian’s Consumer Champion. Renewal is always preparing. I spent my old life wrestling with airlines, insurance companies, and energy providers bent on plundering readers’ piggy banks. My new life? Struggling airlines, insurance companies and energy providers are intent on plundering readers’ piggy banks.
In this age of seismic shifts, it is comforting to know that some things remain constant. You can count on energy companies to soothe your marrow with psychodrama bills and fake accounts. At the same time, certainty remains the business model of insurance companies: many would say that you can be sure that if you damage your car or yourself, the provider will look for a reason to drag your claim.
It’s a long-standing tradition for airlines and accommodation providers to take your money for a booking, but it sometimes seems like actual flights and actual beds are an optional extra cost.
This year I discovered where you can buy takeaway coffee for £100; the mysterious reasons why Travelodge guests are shuttled to highway service stations at night; And what does “forever” mean in banking (about two decades in Santander’s lexicon, it seems).
I investigated how long HMRC believes it takes to make an agreed bank transfer – 33 weeks – and why some retired teachers have to prove every year that they have not died.
At this time of year, I want to pay tribute to those establishments that go out of their way to keep their customers away, and me in my job.
Applause please for the winners of the 2025 Anna Shame Awards.
sensitive ambassador Dealing with dead clients is much easier than dealing with living ones. Maybe that’s why Three (slogan: “Live your best phone”) suggested to CF to “kill” her sick father when she wanted to change ownership of her mobile phone contract. A CF account was set up with him as the main account holder because she was a teenager at the time. Three’s customer service team does not have a process for doing this, but its bereavement service does. It would be helpful if she could suggest registering her father as deceased so that she can enforce her application to make her the primary account holder for her mobile phone. Three warned that it might affect his credit rating, but promised to tell credit agencies that he was still alive after the deed was done. Three later said it would review its operations to pay goodwill.
good health The sex has confounded holidaymakers reading The Guardian. An elderly couple discovered that strangers were in their hotel room while at a Christmas gathering. Evidence? Condoms, underwear and a paper party hat in the bedroom. Premier Inn (motto: “Force for Good”) apologized for “any inconvenience” and announced the case was closed, before careful questioning from The Guardian led to a refund. Then there’s Vrbo (“Where Families Travel Better Together”), which told a young family who found their holiday rental a blood-soaked sex den that their complaint was “minor” and refused compensation until the Guardian intervened.
Good Samaritan Everyone knows that Ryanair has a heart of solid granite. Doctor FB arrived at the departure gate late because she stopped to help an injured passenger. Ryanair (“Great Care”) refused to allow her to board the waiting aircraft and charged her an administration fee of £100 to rebook. Couldn’t the fee be waived as a gesture of good faith, under these circumstances? She insisted it couldn’t, because it was her passengers’ responsibility to be punctual (even if it meant not helping bleeding pensioners, apparently).
Education award Close race, this one. London’s Southwark Council (“United to Serve”) deserves credit for leaving a 91-year-old cancer patient to suffer from damp, mold and vermin for a year while it considered how to address a leak elsewhere in the building. But housing association L&Q (“Our vision is that everyone deserves a high-quality home that gives them the opportunity to live their best life”) went one step further when, without warning, it left residents without running water for 12 days while it late repaired the leak.
Philosopher prize Airbnb (“Belong Anywhere”) must share this with one of its hosts. When a 100-year-old oak tree fell on a French gate, missing the occupants (who had been eating breakfast on the balcony minutes before), damaging the property’s roof and shattering the windshield of their rental car, the host refused to refund their aborted stay. “You have chosen to remember anxiety and trauma rather than celebrate a unique memory,” she told them. Airbnb was similarly optimistic. The company said: “We understand this may have caused you some inconvenience,” then closed their complaint – with no refund – and told them: “Stay safe. Stay healthy.” (She eventually issued a full refund with a £500 voucher after our intervention.)
social justice warrior Where are you likely to face court for confusing “O” with zero? The London borough of Ealing, which protects its residents from harmful forces without fear or favour. When a visiting driver confused the O on his number plate with a zero and entered the wrong number into a parking app, the council gave him the option of an £80 fine or legal action. Os and 0s are identical on the car’s number plates and the driver has paid for parking. Illing didn’t like that, nor even the government’s guidance on enforcing parking penalties, which requires councils to exercise discretion “reasonably and reasonably”. She insisted he was coughing out of “fair consideration…for motorists who comply with all parking regulations”.
Big company Regret No one feels your pain like big corporations. In fact, she adopted a cliched way of embodying her sympathy when she realized she let you down. “We are sorry for any inconvenience” could be thrown around when a civil service pension scheme run by outsourcing company Capita demands a pensioner back £25,000 of overpayments he made in error over 11 years, or when Virgin Atlantic fails to recover the cost of a honeymoon it canceled. It addresses a need when TSB confuses an identity fraud victim with a fraudster, labels their name as fraudulent and causes their bank accounts to be closed. It’s really inappropriate for Airbnb to block you because it has apparently decided that you’re connected to the criminal underworld; Or when Sky fails to overturn the eviction of a family whose house next door was destroyed by a gas explosion.
aa Basil He travels
This award is dedicated to AA itself. He invites us to “Join us on our journey.” But a woman’s car made the journey without her for six months after the AA had it towed to an approved garage for repairs. It was returned – only after I reported it stolen – with a layer of bird dirt, a £70 fine notice for a parking violation, and an extra 15,000 miles on the clock. Reassuringly for other AA members, the association told me that its relationship with the garage in question was now “under review”.
Bereavement support
The insurance companies collectively received this award. Their response, when informed of a policyholder’s death, can be to hit the grieving partner with a significant hike in their home and auto insurance premiums. Why? One service provider was surprisingly frank with a new widow: she now lives alone, and explained that her home is more at risk of burglary.