Another success involved getting debt collectors to stop chasing a reader for an alleged debt on a Corgi toy ice-cream van – worth £1.99. It was hardly an earth-shattering amount, but the fear of debt collectors and bailiffs coming to call is all too real and widespread. Many correspondents needed my help with shaking off the hounds chasing debts of all kinds that they did not owe.

At the other end of the monetary scale, I dealt with tragic cases where victims of fraud lost sums that were sometimes in the six figures. The pandemic has provided fertile ground for scammers to take advantage of us, as we all spent more time at home, often isolated from friends and family. I wasn’t without sleepless nights myself, worrying about what might happen to vulnerable readers who had lost life savings. It seemed to me that banks’ decisions over whether or not to refund victims were often inconsistent and made at complete random.

While I was delighted to be able to persuade some financial institutions to return some or all of a victims’ losses, it has not been without controversy. Many readers criticised my support of those who were swindled, instead defending the big banks’ position and arguing they should have taken better care of their money. I understand the arguments, but I am afraid that it is the banks and their anti-fraud processes, along with those of the technology and telecoms firms and the police, that are partly to blame – not victims. It is only the threat of having to reimburse stolen money that will push banks to tighten their systems further and prevent the fraud happening in the first place.

It is true that individuals should be responsible for taking care of their money and not all cases should result in a refund, especially if a customer has been proven to be reckless. But in general the incidents I wrote about were, in my view, deserving causes.

…And my failures 

I cannot claim a 100pc success rate. There were many cases where, rightly or wrongly, organisations refused to change their decision on whether to issue a refund, make an insurance payout or provide compensation. I included several of these in my columns as they offered an important warning to others of the traps and, in some cases, the companies to avoid.

One of the most popular of my no-wins, if you judge it by the hundreds of comments beneath the online version of my story, was when a reader accidentally put AdBlue additive into the diesel reservoir of his Audi, causing £15,500 of damage to the car, which his insurance from Tesco Bank refused to pay for. I explained how only a few motor policies would cover such an incident – and sadly Tesco Bank’s wasn’t one of them.

Another defeat that got readers talking was when the owner of a £5,000 electric bike had his theft claim denied because he was deemed to have left his cycle unattended while he was simply unlocking his front door. I did manage to extract a £500 goodwill gesture from his insurance provider Saga, which, while disappointing, was at least enough for the reader to purchase a standard pushbike replacement.

‘Because of Covid’

Many of the cases I took on were simply due to customer service operations that left a lot to be desired. Many would have never reached my desk had companies paid more attention to the basic premise of keeping their customers satisfied. The “because of Covid” excuse continued to be given out even when lockdowns and work from home orders were far behind us.

Hiding behind websites with anonymous chatbots with no phone number available for customers to use when they have concerns is the opposite of customer service. It is a total disservice. No wonder customers feel the need to find a voice via a consumer champion.

The worst were the companies that said all the right things to me about putting their customers first, only to then slap a gagging order on the reader. They would only pay up the agreed compensation if the reader pledged not to disclose what happened. That left a truly nasty taste in the mouth.

So goodbye for now…

Overall, I have learnt a great deal while investigating cases. My tips for those who are in need of this column’s help is to spell out their story as clearly as possible with relevant documents to back it up, provide the permission required for the Consumer Champion to speak to the companies (it speeds things up considerably to include this with your first correspondence) and, if writing in by post, to please include an email address if you have one as well as a phone number – it really helps get the show on the road for your case.

Thank you to those readers who wrote to thank me for my help by email, letter or with chocolates or flowers (you shouldn’t have). And most of all to those who donated to various charities in their gratitude for my intervention.

I might be saying cheerio to you today, but never fear: Katie Morley is back from maternity leave and raring to go. She is already busy flexing her consumer champion muscle and solving cases behind the scenes. You will be reading the results of her efforts soon.

Whether you have been ripped off to the tune of £1 or a £1m, Katie wants to hear from you. 

Meanwhile, all there is for me to do is wipe down my whiteboard and wish all this column’s readers well.