My heart sank when our boiler packed up tonight. The coldest winter for years, with no end in sight to the big freeze. Not the time to test our expensive Homecare policy with British Gas. 

So it proved. The soonest British Gas could offer an engineer visit was next Wednesday – five days' time. The only advice the guy on the phone offered was pouring water over an outlet pipe. Needless to say, that made no difference apart from making my feet wet. When I said we had an 18 month old baby, the British Gas man came up with the priceless advice that an 18 month old baby would generate his own body heat. In other words, go away and shiver for five days.

I then asked if British Gas would refund my premiums if I could find someone locally who could get the boiler going again. Oh no. 

Now I appreciate these are busy times for central heating engineers – I'm sure we're not the only household whose heating has packed up. And it's only right that priority should be given to the elderly. But this experience has confirmed my suspicion that we were conned into taking out a British Gas Homecare policy. There's no point in having this cover unless it actually rides to the rescue when you need help. We won't be renewing. Instead, we'll save the £338 for a local supplier who actually provides a service.

UPDATE: British Gas customer service called earlier to apologise for its agent's 'unacceptable' comments, and promise to pay us £30 – but not an earlier appointment. We're running a collection of ancient electric fires, moving them around the house with us. It reminds me of a very cold night at university, in January 1985, when four of us huddled in our living room and watched the Italian Job and Gregory's Girl on television in front of a two bar electric fire…