...to finally admit that I don't owe them any money.

I only had to write 1 letter a month, put up with at least 1 phone call and one letter a week from various debt collection agencies, not to mention hours on hold, phone conversations with hundreds of Tesco staff and at least 3 faxes.

Seems the threat of the financial ombudsman did the trick, although when I mentioned that to one woman today she had a fit at me "you haven't lodged a complaint" er, I think thats not quite true, is it love?

Anyway, long story short:

I took out insurance with Tesco, but being Mr Disorganised I forgot to return a few documents and then buggered off on holiday. Upon my return, I found a letter saying that as they hadn't recieved said documents, they were cancelling my insurance in 7 days, which just so happened it suited me at the time, so I took my car off the road and sent off my SORN (thank God I did that!)

3 months later, Tesco send me a nasty letter because I haven't paid the last 3 months installments.
"Eh? But you cancelled it?", I said.
"Nope", they said, "we put you on a 3 month account watch"
"But I have it in writing from you"
"Well we have no record of a cancellation".

Anyway, I had to prove that I had a letter and that I'd taken the car off the road (receipt for SORN was a life saver at this point) so they agreed to recalculate what I owed.

2 weeks pass and I get a letter saying that the amount owed was reduced from £250 to £1.40 however they then added a fee of £95 for early cancellation so now I owed £91.40.

Well, being an obstinate bugger, I complained that in previous account breakdowns, the £95 charge was never mentioned so there was no way they could add it now, spoke to one woman who was extremely rude and told me I had to pay it,but when I wouldn't back down she passed me to another department who immediately said that if Tesco's had cancelled the account, no charge should be applied. Result!

I'm planning to pay the remaining £1.40 over 12 months... ;)