Have you ever been ripped off by a company or service provider? I feel like most of us have a story like this to share. I've had many run-ins myself. I'll spare you the details, but I've dealt with energy ombudsmen, unfair parking fines, knock-off products arriving in the post, and most recently, an estate agent who got their end-of-tenancy reports mixed up.

In each of these cases, they're all been isolating experiences. Companies that cocked up like to pin blame on the customer. Alternatively, it can be a maddening experience, as you get passed from pillar to post, and you have to re-explain your situation to someone else. If you're lucky, you get given a cursory goodwill gesture and decide to cut your losses.

But what if you had a journalist in your corner?

As consumer champion at The Telegraph, Ruth Emery's job is to investigate the problems her readers send in and hunt down solutions for them. And then she writes up the results of her pursuits in her column. She explains:

"The readers I help are often really at their wits’ end. They've already tried for so long to resolve it themselves and tried so many different avenues."