In December 2022 I bought a house and unknowingly inherited prepayment meters for my gas and electricity. I am disabled and have intestinal failure resulting from Crohn’s disease so I spend 23 hours a day hooked up to medical equipment. I depend on my electricity supply to keep the equipment charged and to refrigerate my medication.

With a compromised immune system, it’s essential that I keep my house heated using my gas central heating. I don’t have financial difficulties that would prevent me from paying my energy bills, so I asked Scottish Power to move me onto a credit meter so I could pay my bills by direct debit. I have spent many hours on the phone to Scottish Power, and it has acknowledged that I should not be on prepayment meters because of my disability.

The electricity meter was switched to smart mode in March last year, but I’m still on a prepayment meter for my gas. I have to go to a shop to top up my prepayment card, and I really struggled with this last winter. I have had to rely on my family to top up my card twice a week when I’m too unwell to do it myself.

I spoke to the energy ombudsman last year, which told Scottish Power to apologise, install a smart meter and give me £100 compensation. An engineer came out in June last year but wasn’t able to install the smart meter. Scottish Power then told the ombudsman that it had solved my issue when it hadn’t. I was shocked to receive a statement in July claiming that I owed £1,548 for my gas, apparently based on meter readings. I’m not sure how it thinks I can accrue this debt when I have been on a prepayment meter since I moved in.

• How do I know if my smart meter is faulty?

We are now a year down the line, and I am still in a situation where I risk being physically unable to top up my meter, putting my precarious health at further risk.Nathalie Gresty, Chester

Troubleshooter saysThis isn’t the first time that I’ve helped a reader who has been put through hell by Scottish Power after the supplier incorrectly told the ombudsman that it had fixed a problem.

You are a vulnerable customer so it should have rectified this as a priority, but instead it left you in the lurch for more than a year. Scottish Power told me that an error had been made by a previous supplier so the serial number on your meter didn’t match the one in the national database. It realised this only during the engineer’s visit last summer, which meant that he couldn’t install a smart meter until the database was corrected.

• I paid a £2.50 road toll, but my car was still clamped

For years someone else’s energy account had been linked to the serial number on your meter, so when the database was corrected you ended up with their £1,548 bill. Rather than fixing your issue Scottish Power incorrectly marked the job as complete, which it blamed on an automated process. It told the ombudsman that it had fixed your problem when nothing could be further from the truth.

The ombudsman said: “It’s disappointing to see that Scottish Power has failed to implement our decision on time. We’re continuing to assist Miss Gresty and have been in regular contact with Scottish Power.”

Scottish Power said: “We are sorry for the issues Ms Gresty has experienced and the delays experienced in resolving the matter. Due to an administrative error, the initial appointment to install her new meter was unsuccessful. Further confusion was caused when the appointment was recorded as complete.”

It took another two months for Scottish Power to install a smart meter. You have been refunded £36 credit left over from the prepayment meter and have been given another £100 compensation. I thought this was far too low, but you accepted it and said you were just glad it was finally sorted. Sadly nothing surprises me when it comes to Scottish Power’s mistakes and its failure to fix them, and I hope that one day it will start treating its customers better.

Phoenix Life is making it impossible to cancel my £234 a month insurance

I took out a critical illness policy in 2000 and have been paying £234 a month in premiums since then. The policy was originally with Scottish Provident, which was taken over by Phoenix Life several years later. The policy’s surrender value is now roughly £12,000, so realising that I wasn’t getting a good deal I told Phoenix that I wanted to cancel the policy and take the cash.

In February I sent the forms to surrender the policy and since then have been calling every two weeks to chase it up. I was told it should be sorted on April 15, but when nothing arrived I called and was told I would need to wait another five days.

• Should I get critical illness cover or life insurance?• Compare life insurance deals

Again, nothing happened. I have since been told that it may take another ten weeks, which is totally unacceptable. Phoenix has provided no explanation for the delays, no assurance of when it might be resolved and no proper apology. Meanwhile, I continue to pay into a policy that I no longer want. Each time I contact the call centre I get the impression that the person I’m speaking to wants to get me off the phone as soon as possible.

I am at my wits’ end and do not know what to try next. I just want to cash in the policy and never have to deal with these people again. Could you help?Name and address supplied

Troubleshooter says What is the point in Phoenix giving you a timeline only to miss each date? It wasn’t just that Phoenix hadn’t sent your money — its lack of communication left you in limbo.

Once a company has everything it needs to cash a policy it usually takes ten working days for it to calculate the surrender value and for the money to be paid into a customer’s bank account, yet you were told that it could take another ten weeks. Phoenix told me that a technical issue was causing the delays — it had made some changes to its systems that affected the way it calculated the surrender values. Rather than relying on an automated system, it was doing this manually, which is why payments for some customers were taking longer than usual.

With my involvement your surrender value was calculated within days and £11,794 arrived in your bank account. You were still paying your premiums while this was going on so Phoenix agreed to reimburse the past three payments, giving you a refund of £702. It paid you £400 compensation, £20 to cover the cost of calls you made to the company and 8 per cent interest of £247 to make sure you weren’t out of pocket during the delay.

Phoenix said: “We are very sorry for the levels of service our customer has received in trying to surrender her policy. We have now resolved the technical issue which caused the delay. We have apologised and let her know what we’ve done to fix things for her.”If you have a money problem that you would like Katherine Denham to investigate, email [email protected]. Please include a phone number

£957,173: the amount Troubleshooter has saved readers so far this year