A SHIVERING family was forced to seek warmth in the car after being without power.Dinah Ankrah sat her children three-year-old Chelsea and Martine, five, in the family car and left the engine running after the cold became unbearable.

A SHIVERING family was forced to seek warmth in the car after being without power.

Dinah Ankrah sat her children three-year-old Chelsea and Martine, five, in the family car and left the engine running after the cold became unbearable.

Despite repeated calls to British Gas after the power packed in it took three days for an engineer to call.

It took him five minutes to fix the faulty electric meter.

Miss Ankrah, of Gresley Gardens in Ipswich, said: "If it hadn't been for my brother I don't know how we would have managed it.

"The house was absolutely freezing and we had no hot food either. We went and sat in the car because that was the only place where we could get warm.

"We couldn't leave the house because they kept telling us an engineer was coming so we had to wait around in case he arrived."

Miss Ankrah made many frustrating calls to British Gas and the repair firm contracted to do the work.

She was told engineers were on their way, then cut off at 6pm precisely - the time the call centre closes - after the phone had been left ringing out.

She said: "I got no help from the people on the phone, they just kept telling us someone was coming to do the work, but nobody came.

"And now I have a huge phone bill which is going to be difficult for me to pay because I'm not working at the moment."

A spokesman for British Gas said they had passed on details of the problem to their contractors, but somewhere the information seemed to have gone missing.

"We are compensating Miss Ankrah and we would like to apologise to her for the inconvenience," the spokesman added.