AN ELDERLY widow was reduced to tears after being left without any heating or hot water by an insurance company who failed to fix her broken boiler.

Joan Gold, 76, of Kirkland Avenue in Clayhall, called Energy Insurance Services after her boiler stopped working on December 15.

She said: “I had a chest infection and had not long been out of hospital and I was getting very agitated in the cold,

“I waited 45 minutes to talk to someone who just said they couldn’t find me on the system.

“They said they would call me back, but they didn’t and when I got back to them I was just passed around people who were very rude to me. I was in tears.”

Mrs Gold was forced to wrap herself in blankets and confine herself to her living room with a portable heater while she waited for the company to find her details.

A day after reporting the fault she was told an engineer would be sent out to fix the boiler the following day.

But while she waited in her freezing house for a repairman to turn up, nobody arrived.

Mrs Gold’s family called Energy Insurance Services to complain.

Her daughter, Bernice Figa, 42, said: “I was on the phone trying to get through to them for about an hour.

“My husband is a doctor and he eventually got to speak to them.

“They said their system had two sources of information – one saying she was insured and one saying she wasn’t.

“He said ‘Never mind that, I’m a GP and I can tell you this is an elderly woman who is unwell and could get hypothermia unless her heating is fixed!’

“They just didn’t seem to care.”

Mrs Figa eventually persuaded her mother to give up on the company and paid British Gas to come and fix the boiler.

And she is now demanding the company pay for the cost of the repairs and compensate her mother.

Mrs Gold added: “I am still under the weather and I don’t think the stress helped.

“I am lucky that I have a family who helped me out. But I worry about other elderly people in this situation who are not so lucky.”

A spokesman for Energy Insurance Services said: “We are investigating this as a matter of urgency and will contact Mrs Gold to discuss her concerns in more detail and to offer any assistance we can.

"Naturally we take all issues such as this extremely seriously.”