In an ideal world, our team of personal financial journalists would never need to step in and help you when things go wrong.
What I mean is: we’d love to see companies, government departments and other organisations always treat people fairly, and come up with reasonable solutions to problems long before you need to contact us.
However, this world is far from ideal and in the past year we have had a deluge of reader complaints like never before on a smorgasbord of culprits – big and small.
No matter how tiny the amount of money involved or how trivial a company makes you feel your issue is, we always endeavour to help.
Shining a light: Our personal finance journalist always hold companies – bit and small – to account
I speak for the team here when I say, that’s what gets us up in the morning – the thought of stepping in to some of your battles and taking companies to task.
Alongside that, even when we’ve exhausted each avenue and perhaps haven’t been able to get your money back, shining a light on what happened to you helps us educate and inform our readers to hopefully stop them from being hit by a similar problem.
The past few months have really showcased this side of This is Money and how we’re here to help you as much as possible – and heading into 2024, we will keep fighting your corner, so keep writing in.
For example, the brilliant Crane on the Case series – which goes from strength to strength – has helped claw back thousands of pounds for our readers this year.
This ranges from the elderly being charged obscene amounts of money to change a fuse, to Chinese firms registering businesses to residential addresses. Helen is always beavering away in the background investigating your problems.
Some of these turn into far wider, bigger pieces off of just one complaint. For example, shining the light on energy firm Ovo and inaccurate billing – in the end, we had a dossier of 450 cases. From tiny seeds and all that.
We scratch the surface, and hundreds of you write in with similar problems.
Take Barclays debanking small organisations and charities as another example.
In October, Helen wrote about a community garden bank account being shuttered – and we’ve had a steady stream of near identical cases since, from choirs to a blindness charity. We keep receiving cases, and we keep taking Barclays to task.
Sticking on the theme of banks, NatWest has also been in our crosshairs in recent months too.
Helen Kirrane recently revealed a pool of readers with £2million worth of bodged Isa transfers, while Sam Barker undertook a deep investigation about its ex-fraud boss who was moonlighting for a law firm… which specialised in suing banks on behalf of scam victims.
Angharad Carrick has been breathing down the neck of the Royal Mail in recent months, with plenty of you – including posties – getting in touch to confirm problems with its service, really bringing the topic to life.
She also recently reported from a brave man who put his head above the parapet to say: I was involved in a bitcoin scam and now have to sell my home.
He just wanted us to publish his story to help stop others falling into the scammers’ traps, and Ang did so in a sympathetic way.
Tanya Jefferies continues to battle the DWP over the state pension top-up fiasco; Ed Magnus on how estate management charges seem to be the new leasehold… the list honestly goes on and on.
All of these stories above have been sent in by you, the lifeblood of This is Money.
I know I’ve blown our own tuba rather loudly here, but I’m passionate and proud about our original journalism and taking firms to task.
If you – or a family member, friend or acquaintance – are ever let down by a company or organisation, we’re standing by, refreshing our email inbox to put on our spurs and attempt to help – editor@thisismoney.co.uk.
