Jayne Dowle: It's time for us to rise against rip-off Britain

Take car insurance. Nobody wants to pay it – in fact, plenty don't, but that's another story. My recent renewal quote was about 100 more than I paid last year. I'd been with this particular insurance company for ages. So I rang to see if they could come up with a better deal. Considering we were talking about more than 500 here, I expected them to be keen to negotiate.

The bloke on the phone couldn't have been less interested. He wasn't budging, even when I told him that if he didn't I'd be cancelling my policy and moving to another insurer. So I carried out my threat. As I put the phone down, I wondered if this was some kind of natural wastage. Did losing customers, just like that, help the company to cut costs? And this, I should add, was a Yorkshire-based firm. I ended up finding another policy for 420. So if I hadn't challenged that quote, I would have been at least 100 out of pocket.

I still smart from the aftermath of the one and only car accident I have ever had, when my Renault 5 lost a disagreement with a dustbin lorry. The insurance company wrote it off and I had to find several thousand pounds to buy a new car. Two weeks later, I saw a young lad driving my old car down the street. So much for a "write-off". The insurance company had sold it on to a dodgy garage, which had patched it up and flogged it to this lad, who was proudly driving it around as his first car. I had to flag him down and tell him. His father was speechless with rage.

I think it's the lack of power we have in situations like this which makes us so frustrated. It's like when you take your car to the garage for a service and the mechanic rings you up and tells you that something major needs replacing at a cost of several hundred pounds. How do you know he is telling the truth? You don't. My only solution is to use Andy, our local mechanic. If he did me over, it would be round the working-men's club with the speed of Hermes, courtesy of my father.

But in so many situations, we have no recourse whatsoever. Especially when the technology is beyond mere mortals. One friend is being driven to the brink of madness by broadband internet speeds. Basically, the speed he was sold when he bought his "bundle" simply isn't happening. Complaint after complaint has made no difference. Short of getting a JCB and digging up the cables himself, there is nothing he can do. And this is a guy who runs his own business, and depends on the internet to generate work. When I hear Government ministers banging on about the need for more entrepreneurs. I want to scream. I'm sure that David

Cameron has plenty on his to-do list, but if he seriously wants this

country to become a land of opportunity, then somehow he has to take on this kind of thing.

Goodness knows how. If you have ever been ripped off in any industry, you will realise how tackling a consumer complaint can soon become a full-time job in itself. We're in the middle of fighting a holiday company for a refund of the grand sum of e148, payment for the taxi required when our coach transfer failed to pick us up from our Spanish hotel, and stranded us an hour's drive from Barcelona airport.

My email outlining the sequence of events is longer than this column and took me the best part of an afternoon to compose. We're now on round two. The company refuses to take any responsibility, and hasn't even apologised. All we got was a curt reply – after three weeks – and a "thank-you-for-your-feedback".

"Feedback?" No concern then for the battering our credit card took, the tears of our frightened children, and the stress we suffered, almost missing our flight. Since when did a genuine complaint become

"feedback"? If companies like this really did care what their customers thought, they would act accordingly, instead of dismissing us as market research.

I always try to be as polite as possible in these circumstances, even though I am seething inside. My husband, normally such a quiet, mild-mannered chap, lets rip. I still cower when I recall the roasting he gave the mobile phone company after they removed the insurance clause from his contract and didn't tell him until he tried to replace his broken phone.

Perhaps if the country rose up as one and did the same, we might get somewhere. Come on, we have to nothing to lose but our claims. Let's not stand for rip-off Britain any longer.