A family say they have "one stress away" after they won a competition to have their energy bills paid by a Glasgow-based company for three months.
Mum-of-two Jennifer Tait entered the competition to have her energy bills paid for October, November and December by iSafe Gas after she saw it on a local Facebook group.
Jennifer, who lives in Hamilton with her partner Scott McNab, says she never expected to win but decided to enter as she had "nothing to lose".
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The 33-year-old said: "At first, I didn’t quite believe it because you get so many of these competitions but then Imran [Ahmad from iSafe] messaged me and phoned me and told me it was actually real.
"It was amazing. It’s such a good thing that they’ve done, I think especially with the current climate.
"I think it would have helped anyone.
"What they did was really good. I just think it was such a wholesome thing to do, it was lovely."
Jennifer, who works as a nurse in A&E, is currently on maternity leave after giving birth to son Harris five months ago, and is also mum to Ollie who will turn two in December.
She says having her bills paid in the lead-up to Christmas will help the family over the festive season.
She said: "I don’t think anyone factored in for this [rising energy bills] in savings so it will help over Christmas, meaning we can put the heating on with a bit less stress.
"For the wee ones, it means we won’t have to worry as much for when they’re in the house.
"I don’t think anyone could say it wouldn’t make a difference.
"It’s amazing, it means we can stress less, it’s one stress away."
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She added: "I know we’re very lucky to have that because there’s a lot of people that are a lot less fortunate than us and aren’t going to have that this Christmas.
"And it’s our wee boy’s birthday just before Christmas as well so it means we might have a bit more money for that as well so that’s nice."
Jennifer says that not only will iSafe be paying her energy bills until the end of the year, but after she won the competition, they also sent an engineer to service her boiler free of charge two days later.
She said: "I cannot tell you how nice they’ve been.
"I’ve recommended them to pretty much everyone I’ve been speaking to.
"A little goes a long way and if you’ve got people that are willing to go that extra mile it does make a world of difference and it makes everyone’s lives that little bit easier knowing that they’re there."
iSafe Gas was set up by directors Scott Smith and Imran Ahmad in 2019 after they were made redundant from British Gas.
The company puts ‘people before profits’ and Scott says they decided to start the competition to help a local family in the run-up to Christmas following rising gas and electricity prices.
He said: "When they announced there would be a price rise on October 1, with the number of people phoning us and asking what they can do, how can they save money on their gas and electricity, we realised that people were getting really worried and concerned around the run-up to this Christmas about gas and electricity prices becoming unmanageable.
"We thought ‘what can we do to try and help?’
"Even if it’s just one local family at this point, but with a view to doing a lot more in the future, it was just to try and ease the pressure from someone this Christmas."
Scott says the competition is the "first of many things" the company will be doing to give back in and around Glasgow, and they will be working alongside The Clutha Trust this winter to help families that can’t afford Christmas presents for their children due to rising energy costs.
He explained: "We’re going to be doing a lot more to give back and try and help people because of the number of people that contact us and when our heating surveyors are going out and our engineers are going out, there are people asking, ‘what things can I do to stop putting on the heating’.
"The company is growing quite nicely but we don’t ever want to lose touch with genuine people."
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