As This is Money’s consumer champion, my job is to help our readers solve their trickiest financial problems.
Every week, people send in their issues and I get to work speaking to the company in question, working out what has gone wrong and trying to get justice.
From banks to retailers and energy firms to insurers, there is no institution too big – or small – for me to investigate.
Since 2022, I have won back £1.44million for readers.
Over the past 12 months, I have put many organisations under the spotlight. Some of the stories are sad, some are mind-bendingly complicated and others are plain bizarre.
Here are some of the highlights from the Crane on the Case column in 2024…
Phone snatchers raiding readers’ cash
Anyone who lives or works in a big town or city will be aware of the phone snatching epidemic sweeping the streets, which has us clutching our devices with an iron grip.
Rather than the pricey phone itself, the main motive for the criminals is the chance to hack in to the owners’ finance apps, potentially siphoning off thousands.
Several This is Money readers contacted to tell me they had fallen victim to this – but their banks refused to refund them as the transactions ‘weren’t suspicious’.
Sometimes the banks insisted there was no evidence of fraud, even when the theft was being investigated by the police.
I didn’t think that was good enough, and told the banks that.
In one case I contacted Revolut and persuaded it to reimburse a reader £2,050, as well as a £250 goodwill payment. In another case, it paid back £3,900 and a £150 goodwill gesture.
In a third case, I secured a £2,200 refund for a reader from the crypto app Coinbase, after he was conned via Sim card fraud.
Stay safe out there – and take a look at these tips to turn your phone into Fort Knox.
Energy firms are still bungling bills
Thankfully, energy bills have edged down from their record highs this year – but the way firms treat their customers still leaves a lot to be desired.
The worst case I intervened in this year was that of a small children’s dance school in the West Midlands. The owner received a shock energy bill from the supplier, Eon, which told her she owed £95,000.
At her previous rate of £200 per month, £95,000 would be enough to pay the studio’s bills for 39 years.
Eon eventually installed a smart meter and the bills returned to around £200 each month – but not before making a song and dance about the whole affair.
Put a foot wrong: Eon issued a small dance school with a large energy bill (stock image)
Gravely ill customers refused their cash
The saddest cases I covered this year were those where people reached out to insurers, pension firms and banks while grappling with a serious or terminal illness, and were refused the cash they were entitled to – or forced to waste time they didn’t have waiting for an answer.
One reader was dealt the devastating blow of a motor neurone disease diagnosis, a life-limiting condition which has no cure.
But when he tried to claim his pension early from Railpen on the grounds of ill health, it took nine months – and my intervention – to finally get him the £10,600 lump sum he was owed, as well as a small annual spouse’s pension for his wife.
Another reader suffered a stroke at a relatively young age, and made a claim on her £65,000 critical illness insurance policy to help support her young children.
Legal and General tied her up in administrative knots for six months, and she was worrying about how she would pay the bills. But after I got in touch, the money was in her account within three days.
A third reader couldn’t access his £100,000 savings with Barclays, after he recovered from a stroke better than expected and the bank took a year to register the fact his wife no longer needed control over his account.
Banks need to buck their ideas up when dealing with critically ill customers in 2025.
Lost parking ticket? That’ll be £300
Private car parking firms are a constant bugbear of our readers at This is Money, and this year was no exception.
The worst case was when a reader parked at an NCP car park at Birmingham International train station while on a weekend away in London.
When she misplaced her parking ticket, she was told the fine for losing that tiny scrap of paper would be £300 – and if she didn’t pay, she couldn’t leave.
That was despite CCTV evidence of her entering and leaving the car park, which proved she did not overstay.
When I got involved, I discovered the fine should have been only £100 – and it was waived as a goodwill gesture.
No exit: The reader was told she couldn’t leave the car park unless she paid a £300 fee
Some VERY long-forgotten bank accounts
One of the things I learned writing the column this year is that financial institutions have a very long memory indeed.
In one case, a reader from Grimsby was refused a £200 bank account switching bonus by HSBC… because he had an account with its predecessor Midland Bank 21 years ago.
And there was also the reader who discovered he had been paying fees for an American Express card he cancelled 17 years ago.
While I won some cash back for both readers, it’s a timely reminder to keep track of dormant accounts – and when you ask for them to be closed, make sure they really are.
The 85-year-old accused of late night shopping spree
Often, the problems I cover can be traced back to somebody, somewhere along the line, demonstrating a lack of common sense. Even so, this was an extreme example.
A reader’s elderly father, who had recently recovered from heart surgery and was suffering with early-stage dementia, unexpectedly had £5,523 taken from his bank account.
The payments were made 80 miles from his home, in the middle of the night, at petrol stations and expensive jewellery shops – even though this man typically only goes as far as his local high street to do a food shop or visit his social club.
But HSBC stood firm, saying he had spent the money and couldn’t be reimbursed.
As the father was prone to confusion, it is tricky to work out what really happened – but thankfully after I got in touch HSBC accepted that a midnight shopping spree simply couldn’t be the case.
It paid him back the £5,523, as well as £850 in compensation and interest. What’s more, the Financial Ombudsman also changed its decision on the matter after HSBC uncovered new information.
Which firms have got on your nerves this year – and which have done a good job? Get in touch and let me know on helen.crane@thisismoney.co.uk.
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