For years I have lived a lie. I have lambasted corporate Britain for letting the populace down. I’ve self-righteously blamed airlines for leaving passengers grounded, I’ve hounded energy firms for slugging pensioners with invented bills and exposed councils and insurers for pushing households into homelessness. These last 12 months it’s dawned on me that my ire has been misplaced. The fault lies squarely with consumers and their penchant for illicit activity.

Take those airline passengers. Observer readers, it seems, have form when it comes to trying to smuggle illegal items on board. If it weren’t for the vigilance of airline customer services, a blind Paralympian would brazenly have taken his assistance dog on a flight to a sporting championship, while airport security staff have, time and again, safeguarded the travelling public by confiscating the walking sticks of pensioners.

Then there are the perils of the road, from which insurers are, without fear or favour, endeavouring to shield us all. Many is the author who would be lethally on the loose behind the wheel if insurance providers did not selflessly refuse them cover.

Now, with the budget squeezing company resources, business will need to demand more (from customers) for less (to customers) to keep the economy going. Don’t expect those customers to be grateful. But I have learned to be, and I’m dedicating my annual awards to those who have gone above and beyond to save us from ourselves.

Sensitivity ambassador 2024

Top of the class is Teachers Pensions, run by Capita. It has stopped pension payments to retired teachers who fail to confirm regularly and punctually that they are not dead. It annually asks grieving spouses of deceased teachers whether they have taken a new lover, and its admin backlog is preventing working teachers from getting divorced.

Eco own goal award

Save the planet by saving cash. Who could resist! Which is why the government encouraged property owners to spray foam into their loft cavities to improve insulation and cut bills. They exempted the procedure from VAT and issued green grants for up to two-thirds of the cost. Up to 300,000 householders complied. The good news is that most of them saw heating bills fall. The bad news is they can’t sell their homes. It turns out this insulation, if inexpertly applied, can rot roof timbers. And since the government-fuelled demand prompted a plague of cowboy installers, mortgage lenders won’t touch it. Any of it. Owners who want to sell up or release equity are now forking out thousands to get the stuff prised off.

Disability rights champion 2024

Eurostar’s new accessibility policy decreed passengers with restricted mobility must either take a (paid-for) travelling companion or get themselves to and from the train, since staff were no longer allowed to push personal wheelchairs. However, it forgot to mention this in the policy or on special-assistance booking confirmations.

It updated its website when I pointed this out and seemed surprised that passengers who’d booked assistance were disgruntled at being left stranded on the station concourse. Eventually, after much gentle persuasion, it hit upon a brainwave: staff can now push wheelchairs that don’t look unduly dangerous.

Heart of stone award

Here’s a shout out for British Airways, which ensures shareholders are at the heart of all it does. A more spineless company would have caved in when a newly widowed father found the luxury holiday he’d booked to treat his grieving children had been downgraded due to building work. His online complaint got no response. BA, he was told when he called, was too busy to give him a timeline. It only refunded the £750 difference between what he paid for and what he got when I became involved, more than nine weeks after he’d first complained.

The company also stood firm when its own incompetence prevented a passenger from reaching her grandmother’s deathbed. Agent error had botched her booking and she was denied boarding. BA insisted she pay for a new flight the next day and, for good measure, cancelled her return flight as she was deemed a “no show”. BA didn’t see why it should refund the botched ticket, the replacement or the cancelled return, or pay her compensation for denied boarding. Why? Because, it explained with wondrous logic, a processing error had meant the ticket was not issued correctly and thus it was invalid and passengers with invalid tickets are ineligible for compensation. BA eventually capitulated after I presented it with a lawyer’s opinion on its behaviour.

Forget-me-not prize

Step up, Sheffield Council! It towed away a student’s car which was in breach of temporary parking certificates, but forgot to tell her. It forgot to tell her for a whole year, during which time she reported it as stolen to the police and received an insurance payout. When the council recollected that it had an elderly Citroën on its hands, it informed her that it would be destroyed unless she collected it within two days and paid storage fees amounting to nearly £4,400. Unsurprisingly, the insurer wanted its money back, while the car had been so badly damaged while in the council’s care that it was a write-off. The council backed down in the face of publicity and reached a deal with the insurer.

Stand-out bereavement support

Many have tried for this prize, such as the utilities companies that wrote cheery letters to deceased customers after being notified of their passing. But Amazon gets this gong for its unforgettable reaction when a mother lost her little boy. She had ordered a laptop to plan his funeral. The driver refused to hand over the £800 device, claiming there was a problem with her One Time Passcode (OTP). The OTP was then used to trigger a delivery confirmation, leaving her empty-handed. Amazon was unmoved by her plight – the system showed it had been delivered, therefore it had been, it argued – until Your Problems came calling, whereupon it stumped up a refund and promised to investigate.

PR prize for the canniest marketing pitch

“Unforgettable seats” is what ticketing retailer AXS promised Taylor Swift fans prepared to pay more than £500 for posh tickets. But instead of the singer, Swifties in the VIP rows found themselves contemplating a large tent containing, as it happens, VIPs. As in celebs enjoying corporate hospitality. Those who complained say they were moved to seats that had cost a fraction of the price, and demands for a refund were ignored.