We have pleasure in telling you you've come up short

John Young, a television journalist based in Brighton, took out an endowment policy with Friends Provident in 1991 to cover a £60,000 mortgage. When he wanted to move house in 2000 he called the company to check the value and projected maturity figure for his policy.

He was told that his policy was predicted to mature at £23,000 less than the initial estimate.

"I was shocked," Mr Young says. "But I was even more worried when I was told in February this year that it was even worse and that I was now £27,600 off.

"What infuriated me as much as anything else about this was that when I originally wrote to ask for a projection, the reply telling me that I could be £23,000 short began: 'I refer to your enquiry and now have pleasure in giving the information requested.' It is the unthinking use of that sort of crass cliche that lets slip that fact that these people don't have any grasp of the devastation their incompetence is causing."

Mr Young took out an Isa, on the advice of an independent financial adviser, which he hoped would help cover some - if not all - of the shortfall.

"But it gets grimmer," he says. Jupiter, the company with which he took out the Isa, confirmed that his investment was well off target.

Mr Young says the whole business has made him very sceptical of anything to do with the stockmarket and housing.

"I am now looking to see if I can afford to switch the whole mortgage to a repayment basis," he says. "Houses and stock markets, I have learned, don't mix."