It all began in October 2012 when 30-year old Pete Swift phoned up Sky to cancel his contract.

Swift, who then moved from Stirling to Edinburgh, was approached months later by debt-collection agency about failure to pay for his Sky account.

He was approached by different agency not long after that, despite proving that he had in fact paid his final bill for his satellite and broadband package. And it kept happening, all the while doing damage to his credit rating.

Finally, two and a half years after his first phone call, the situation has been resolved — and he’s been paid £1,500 for all the time he spent.

Swift had sent an invoice for that sum, which represented £25 per hour for 56 hours spent dealing with their error; it was a detailed document, showing where the time had been wasted.

Sky first offered to pay him £60 as compensation, then £500 when that was rebuffed. Eventually, as the court case fast approached, the company relented and paid Swift’s fee in full.

According to the Daily Mail, Swift said: “I grew increasingly infuriated with Sky’s inability to correct their error.

“The customer service I experienced was abysmal – there was a complete disregard for the situation they had put me in and a continued failure to take ownership and fix the problem.”

Sky blamed the situation on a technical fault, with a spokesman saying: “We got it wrong and didn’t resolve things quickly enough. We are really sorry and have apologised.”