The credit crunch is biting. House prices down 10%, rent and mortgages up, energy bills rising and all the rest. Companies like property managers Sheffield Homes and Npower must be desperate to keep the profits flowing - so desperate in fact they taken to making speculative demands to customers in the forlorn hope that one of them will cough up a windfall. One Sheffield shopworker was rocked to her foundations recently when she received a recent rent arrears demand for £72 million for her £21 per week council house. Meanwhile, over in Cambridge, another woman was somewhat er... shocked to receive an electric bill demand for £90 million from Npower - the suppliers of her pay-in-advance meter.

Both companies naturally claimed these were bizarre administrative errors that never should have happened but we at SchNEWS aren't so sure. We warn everyone to check their bills carefully and make sure they don't accidentally pay over tens of millions of extra quids to these rotters - they might not give it back...