I was quite hostile towards him at first, and made a show of going on the web to see if I could find anything to back up his claim that the government had sponsored the deal.

I just thought I'd warn everyone about an EDF sales [problem] that I encountered this week. A salesman knocked on my door and offered me a fixed price per Kw deal for both gas and electricity. We together calculated the expected annual bill based on the power I had used in the past 12 months. The saving was about £140 pa. I signed up, but the salesman left without leaving me his piece of paper showing the prices per kw used for the calculation. I rang EDF the next day and asked for the prices to be sent to me. They came this morning. Lo and behold, surprise surprise, the prices were not fixed for all kw, and the prices the salesman used did not include VAT although I did ask him about that so we could compare like with like. The first band of charges is much higher (40% int the case of gas) than my existing supplier (Southern) and for a much higher number of units. My bills will be far higher if I continue with the deal. I have just phoned to cancel. During the course of our conversation I was told that the government had sent a document to very household recommending the EDF deal (something which I told him I did not believe) and that the EDF website did not publish prices because it would alert the competition to their low price deals, which were due to the fact that EDF was the main carrier of the services. I was also told that I would get an over-65 discount. (Another story I did not believe). The same happened to a neighbour in the same block of flats. Beware EDF.

Don't worry. You should get a like for like replacement. That might be a laptop with Windows 7 and other stuff such as MSWorks instead of Vista. You can't buy a computer without an operating system. They won't replace any software you have purchased (Adobe Photoshop for example), or software that came with a printer, scanner or digital camera. Nor will they replace any free software downloaded from various websites or your broadband supplier's software. You will have to reload all that just as if you had decided to buy another computer.

Update. The new camera (Amazon) and the cheque from Ival arrived on Sat 14th November. Super Service.

I sat on my expensive, now obsolete, Canon Camcorder exactly two weeks ago and contacted my insurer. They referred my claim to Ival who contacted me by telephone 9 days ago and quizzed me on the circumstances of the accident. A courier picked up the camera the following day. Today the camera has been declared irrepairable and I was offered a later model replacement - like for like - at a price of nearly £900. The original camera cost £550. I found a later model for £100 less and they agreed to provide that camera instead. I have ordered one, and they will send me a cheque for that amount less my excess. I consider the service to have been brilliant. I could have accepted the original offer, ordered the cheaper model and kept my excess, but I do like to play fair.