MSE News: Worst banks for complaint rejections named and shamed 15 September 2009 at 6:40AM edited 15 September 2009 at 3:55PM in Reclaim Bank & Credit Card Charges 28 replies 4.5K views

Former_MSE_Guy

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"The shocking scale of consumer mistreatment is uncovered today as banks and other financial firms that brush off genuine complaints in the hope they will simply go away are named and shamed ..."

Read the full story:
Worst banks for complaint rejections named and shamed

Also see: The MSE editorial comment

natweststaffmember

Likelihood is that the 95% is about PPI since many forums say that if the firm says No or even offers and amount to take it to the FOS.....still reading but not a surprise cos PPI is upheld by the FOS in I think 95% or more of cases

natweststaffmember

The provider does not necessarily have to have rejected settlement but might not have offered what the consumer believes is a fair settlement so they take it to the ombudsman. There are occasions where the complaint has NO merit whatsoever ie the bank didn't provide me with a card so I want £50.00 compensation when my out of pocket and reasonable expenses is £10. The offer is rejected by the individual rather than the bank.

esmerellda

That as may be Nats but an average of 71% complaints that went to the ombudsman were upheld in the consumers favour, so its pretty damning that its the banks rejecting the complaints or trying to settle poorly which is rejected quite rightly and then taken to FOS.

and PPI upheld by FOS last annual report was 84%.

MSE_Martin

natweststaffmember wrote: »

The provider does not necessarily have to have rejected settlement but might not have offered what the consumer believes is a fair settlement so they take it to the ombudsman. There are occasions where the complaint has NO merit whatsoever ie the bank didn't provide me with a card so I want £50.00 compensation when my out of pocket and reasonable expenses is £10. The offer is rejected by the individual rather than the bank.

That's true but is likely to be almost negligible... while bank charges was on it'd be somewhat different... an interesting point though

Chrismaths

And it's here we see the most shocking stats: big providers like Egg, Black Horse, MBNA and Lloyds lose up to 99% of cases that get to the Ombudsman. In other words, sometimes, only one in one hundred initially gets compensated.

That first statement doesn't imply the second. If 1000 people complain, NastyBank may compensate 900 of them. If those 100 people complain to the ombudsman and 99 get compensated, then NastyBank has still compensated 90% of people initially.

Noble_Savage

How do we get to know about the good guys? The ones who just don't get many complaints in the first place? Are there any?

pixwix

We talk about banks as though they were single entities. But of course the culprits here are flesh and blood people. When large organisations misbehave - and it happens with most large scale commercial organisations, including central and local government - it happens courtesy of the kind of employees whose personal principles can be bought and paid for - often distressingly cheaply.

I'm retired now, and worked for a variety of employers over the years, many of them unscrupulous. They paid me for a day's work and they got good value for money. But they never ever owned me, my opinions or my principles - and I've walked away from employers who thought they could.

If it wasn't for the kind of morally-flexible self-justifying lickspittles that seem to pervade our society these days, criminal misbehaviour of this kind would be a lot rarer.

So when we've all complained about our treatment at the hands of the banksters .... just what did WE do at work today?

bunking_off

Sigh, maybe I'm in a pedantic mood today, but reading the article I see plenty of "substantial evidence to suggest", but no "proof" presented. Not a good one, in my view...

MSE_Martin

bunking_off wrote: »

Sigh, maybe I'm in a pedantic mood today, but reading the article I see plenty of "substantial evidence to suggest", but no "proof" presented. Not a good one, in my view...

Not sure which of the two articles you're referring too - but we've proof by the bucket load.

We have companies turning down thousands of PPI cases where 99% of time the Ombudsman rules against them. The Ombudsman has publically said it has shown them the statistics in private for a while to ask them to change their policy of rejection but it hasn't happened so this is now a public name and shame.

The pieces are full of stats... what isn't proved?

natweststaffmember

Why not read the report on the FOS website, bunking off and maybe you'd see a lot of proof. In fact the BBA comment is quite laughable since it groups complaints by banking groups rather than individual firms since that MIGHT make it appear worse