Hang on while I put another £400 in the meter

While we have npower in our sights after their 26 per cent gas price hike - hands up anyone who had a 26 per cent pay rise this year - they have a novel way of dealing with missing meter readings.

Like many people I pay by direct debit so I don't have to deal with the bills which, I must be honest, I thought was the general idea of direct debit.

Miss a few readings because the you are not in, or more likely not quick enough when the reader rushes round, one knock and he is off to the next house like a ferret up a drainpipe, and you suddenly find they whack your direct debit up in my case by 1133 per cent - that's right more than a thousand per cent - to £391 a month. I suspect Longbridge in the good old days when we actually made something in this country was not paying much more than that.

Complaints to npower fall on deaf ears while they, painfully slowly, work out the reading on the meter against their estimate - they even got that wrong, in their favour of course, by a considerable number of units - and to add insult to injury they have taken another £391 payment.

Mind you, the way they are hiking prices that may well now be correct.