In an ideal world, our team of personal finance journalists would never have to step in and help you when something goes wrong.
What I mean is: we would like companies, government departments and other organizations to always treat people fairly and come up with reasonable solutions to problems, long before you have to contact us.
However, this world is far from ideal and over the past year we have had an avalanche of complaints from readers like never before about a mix of perpetrators – big and small.
No matter how small the amount of money or how trivial a company makes you feel your problem is, we always try to help.
Shining a light: Our personal finance journalist always holds companies – small and small – accountable
I speak for the team here when I say, that's what gets us up in the morning: the thought of joining some of your battles and holding companies accountable.
Additionally, even if we have exhausted all options and may not have been able to get your money back, shining a light on what happened to you helps us educate and inform our readers to hopefully prevent that they are affected by a similar problem. .
Over the past few months we've been showcasing this side of This is Money and how we're here to help you as much as we can – and heading into 2024 we'll continue to fight for you, so keep writing.
For example, the brilliant Crane on the Case series – which is going from strength to strength – has helped our readers recover thousands of pounds this year.
This ranges from paying elderly people obscene amounts of money to replace a fuse, to Chinese companies registering businesses at residential addresses. Helen is always in the background investigating your problems.
Some of these turn into much wider, larger pieces after just one complaint. For example, shining a light on energy company Ovo and inaccurate billing – in the end we had a file of 450 cases. From little seeds and stuff.
We're scratching the surface, and hundreds of you are writing with similar problems.
Another example is Barclays debanking small organizations and charities.
In October, Helen wrote about the closure of a community garden bank account – and since then we've had a steady stream of almost identical cases, from choirs to a blindness charity. We continue to receive business and we continue to hold Barclays to account.
Sticking with the banking theme, NatWest has also been in our sights in recent months.
Helen Kirrane recently revealed a pool of readers worth £2million in Isa transfers, while Sam Barker undertook an in-depth investigation into his ex-fraud boss who was in the shadows of a law firm… which specialized in prosecuting banks on behalf of fraud victims. .
Angharad Carrick has been breathing down the Royal Mail's neck in recent months, with many of you – including postal workers – getting in touch to confirm issues with the service, which has really brought the topic to life.
She also recently reported on a courageous man who stuck his head above the parapet and said: I was involved in a Bitcoin scam and now have to sell my house.
He just wanted us to publish his story to prevent others from falling into the scammers' trap, and Ang did so in a sympathetic manner.
Tanya Jefferies continues to battle the DWP over the state pensions fiasco; Ed Magnus on how property management fees seem to be the new leasehold… the list goes on.
All of these above stories were submitted by you, the lifeblood of This is Money.
I know I've been blowing our own tuba pretty loud here, but I'm passionate and proud of our original journalism and corporate scrutiny.
If you – or a family member, friend or acquaintance – are ever let down by a company or organization, we are here to help and refresh our email inbox to sharpen our tracks and try to help – editor @thisismoney.co.uk.