It’s amazing isn’t it? We’re a service economy with a heavy reliance on financial services but when it comes to customer services and financial services, we’re useless.

Our email inbox is permanently full of complaints about companies that refuse to help their customers – as is our old-fashioned post bag.

For the ninth year running the Wooden Spoon awards are upon us, where we highlight the most complained about companies and organisations of the year and ask readers, listeners and viewers to vote for the absolute worst. Last year the BT chief executive collected the award.

This year, the execrable Southern Rail makes the shortlist as it enters the festive period without a timetable and none of the bosses in jail.

Who gets your vote?

Join Rachel Rickard Straus (British Gas), Lee Boyce (Banks – all of them) and Georgie Frost (Southern Rail) for a fabulously entertaining look at some of things we hate with a passion.

Also on the show…

• We look at how mortgage lending works. Did you know they have lending quotas and when the cash runs low, the rates go up and vice versa. Nowt, necessarily, to do with any outside economic pressures. Hopefully, the withdrawal this week of the cheapest ever deal is not the start of a trend.

• Stupid house price surveys and their contradictory view of the state of the market

• Spread betting is suddenly in the spotlight as people wake up to the fact that it’s gambling, not investing.

• And finally, the game’s over, according to the author of a new book about financial Armageddon. We’re heading for the biggest financial crash in history and the chances of recovery from this one are smaller than the interest you can get on savings account.