Anna Tims’ dishonours checklist: the not-so good, the dangerous and the ugly customer support awards 2025

[ad_1] W hen the 12 months started, I used to be a listening ear to Your Issues, my column for the Observer. Now I’m a Guardian client champion. Reinvention is at all times bracing. My previous life was spent wrestling airways, insurance coverage companies and power suppliers intent on plundering readers’ piggy banks. My new life? Wrestling airways, insurance coverage companies and power suppliers intent on plundering readers’ piggy banks.

It's a consolation on this period of seismic shifts to know some issues stay fixed. You possibly can financial institution on power companies to sit back your marrow with billing psychodramas and phantom accounts. In the meantime, certainty continues to be the enterprise mannequin of insurers: many would say you may be sure that in the event you harm your automotive, or your self, your supplier will search for a purpose to stall over your declare.

It's an age-old custom for airways and lodging suppliers to take your money for a reserving, however precise flights and precise beds typically seem like thought of an non-compulsory further.

This 12 months, I've found the place you should purchase a takeaway espresso for £100; the mysterious explanation why visitors at Travelodge may be shunted by night time to motorway service stations; and what “for ever” means within the banking sector (about 20 years in Santander’s lexicon, apparently).

I've investigated how lengthy HM Income and Customs reckons it must make an agreed financial institution switch – 33 weeks – and why some retired academics need to show every year they aren't lifeless.

An aged couple was no less than anticipating a refund after discovering proof that strangers had intercourse of their Premier Inn room whereas they have been out. {Photograph}: Javier Zayas Pictures/Getty Pictures Right now of 12 months I prefer to acknowledge these organisations which have labored so laborious to maintain their clients at arm’s size, and to maintain me in a job.

Applause, please, for the winners of Anna’s dishonours awards 2025.

Sensitivity ambassador Lifeless clients are a lot simpler to take care of than dwell ones. Maybe that's the reason Three (slogan: “Reside your finest telephone life”) steered CF “kill off” her sick father when she needed to alter the possession of her cell phone contract. CF’s account had been arrange with him because the principal account holder as a result of she was then a youngster on the time. Three’s customer support group doesn't have a course of for this, however its bereavement service does. Helpfully, it steered it mark her father down as deceased so it might oblige her request to make her the first account holder for her personal cell phone. That would, Three warned, have an effect on his credit standing, but it surely promised to inform credit score businesses that he was nonetheless alive after the deed was achieved. Three later stated it will overview its processes a goodwill cost.

Good hygiene Intercourse has bedevilled Guardian-reading holidaymakers. An aged couple found that strangers had been at it of their resort room whereas they have been at a Christmas gathering. The proof? Condoms, knickers and a paper occasion hat within the bed room. Premier Inn (slogan: “Pressure for Good”) apologised for “any inconvenience” and declared the case closed, earlier than delicate questioning from the Guardian prompted a refund. Then there may be Vrbo (“The place households journey higher collectively”), which advised a younger household who discovered their vacation rental was a bloodstained intercourse den that their grievance was “minor” and refused compensation till the Guardian stepped in.

The housing affiliation L&Q left residents, with out warning, with no operating water for 12 days at it belatedly mounted a leak. {Photograph}: RichardBaker/Alamy Good Samaritan Everybody is aware of Ryanair has a coronary heart of … stable granite. FB, a physician, reached her departure gate late as a result of she had stopped to assist an injured passenger. Ryanair (“Nice Care”) refused to let her board the ready airplane and charged her a £100 admin price to rebook. Might it not waive the price as a goodwill gesture, given the circumstances? No it couldn't, it insisted, since it's its passengers’ accountability to be punctual (even when it means not serving to bleeding pensioners, it appears).

Nurture prize An in depth race, this one. London’s Southwark council (“United to Serve”) deserves a shoutout for leaving a 91-year-old most cancers affected person with damp, mould and bugs for a 12 months whereas it contemplated the right way to tackle a leak elsewhere within the block. However the housing affiliation L&Q (“Our imaginative and prescient is that everybody deserves a top quality residence that offers them the prospect to dwell a greater life”) went one step additional when, with no warning, it left residents with out operating water for 12 days whereas it belatedly mounted a leak.

Airbnb finally paid a full refund and a £500 voucher to clients after Guardian Cash intervened. {Photograph}: Dado Ruvić/Reuters Thinker’s prize Airbnb (“Belong Wherever”) should share this with one in every of its hosts. When a 100-year-old oak tree fell on to a French gite, narrowly lacking the occupants (who’d been having breakfast on the terrace minutes earlier), damaging the property’s roof and smashing their rent automotive windscreen, the host refused to refund their aborted keep. “You will have chosen to recollect the concern and trauma as a substitute of celebrating a novel reminiscence,” she advised them. Airbnb was equally sanguine. “We perceive this will have triggered some inconvenience to you,” it stated, then closed their grievance – minus refund – and advised them: “Hold secure. Keep wholesome.” (It will definitely issued a full refund together with a £500 voucher after our intervention).

Social justice warrior The place do you doubtlessly face a courtroom for complicated an “O” with a zero? The London borough of Ealing, which shields its residents from dangerous forces with out concern or favour. When a visiting driver confused an O on his automotive quantity plate with a zero and entered the unsuitable digit right into a parking app, the council gave him the choice of an £80 fantastic or authorized motion. Os and 0s are an identical on automotive quantity plates and the motive force had paid for his parking. That didn't wash with Ealing, nor did authorities steering on parking penalty enforcement, which requires councils to train discretion “sensibly and fairly”. It insisted he cough up out of “truthful consideration … to motorists who adjust to all of the parking rules”.

Applause, maybe for the AA, over its remedy of 1 member’s automotive? {Photograph}: Caiaimage/Martin Barraud/Getty Pictures/iStockphoto Company contrition Nobody feels your ache like huge enterprise. In truth, it has adopted a platitude to encapsulate its empathy when it realises it has allow you to down. “We’re sorry for any inconvenience” may be rolled out when the civil service pension scheme managed by the outsourcing firm Capita calls for a retiree refund £25,000 price of overpayments it had unintentionally remodeled 11 years, or Virgin Atlantic fails to refund the price of a honeymoon it cancelled. It meets the necessity when TSB confuses a sufferer of ID fraud with the fraudster, applies fraud markers to his title and causes the closure of his financial institution accounts. Inconvenient it's certainly when Airbnb bans you as a result of it has seemingly determined you might be related to the prison underworld; or when Sky fails to cancel the package deal of a household whose home was wrecked by a gasoline explosion subsequent door.

AA intrepid journey

This award is for the AA itself. “Be part of us on our journey” it invitations. However one lady’s automotive made the journey with out her for six months after the AA towed it to an accepted storage for restore. It was returned – solely after she reported it as stolen – with a coating of fowl grime, a £70 penalty cost discover for a parking breach, and 15,000 further miles on the clock. Reassuringly for different AA members, the affiliation advised me its relationship with the storage in query was now “underneath overview”.

Bereavement assist

Insurers have collectively earned this prize. Their response, when knowledgeable of a policyholder’s demise, may be to hit the bereaved accomplice with an enormous hike in premiums for residence and automotive cowl. Why? One supplier was disarmingly frank with a brand new widow: now she lives alone, it defined, her house is extra susceptible to break-ins.