Being a gangly child in the extreme (6ft tall, all elbows and feet) I was no stranger to the savage laws of the playground and it was there, confronted by a somewhat belligerent audience, that I began to develop my laconic wit and engaging persona. If that failed, and it often did, I‘d promise to bring in my big brother.

These days, I’m pretty good at fighting my corner. So when a company I had shopped with was a little tardy with my refund of £110, I opted straight for plan A. Plan A comprises a base layer of icily polite assertiveness, laced with a sugary coating of sarcasm. Plan A rarely wins me any friends but does invariably get results. So effective is Plan A, I have never needed a Plan B – until now. Each month I asked for my refund, each month I was told it had just been processed. Each month I’d check my statement, to find it devoid of refund and then we started again.

No amount of irrefutably logical emails made any difference, neither did my increasingly exasperated phone calls.

This went on for four months…

I have many failings, refusing to give in, is just one of them.

So I wrote a polite little email in the sweetest tones with lots of hyperlinks, simply asking if they had any suggestions as to how I might extract a refund from them, and I wondered mildly should I mention it in my blog, or on Twitter, or maybe share my experience on a review site...?

The next day I had a very nice phone call and a follow up email, and two days later I had a cheque signed by the MD.

Notably, I had not even used social media to share my frustration, I merely suggested I was considering it. How powerful is that?

And so much more effective than the threat of my big bro ever was. Especially as it soon became apparent I was, in fact, an only child…