Have your say on the Financial Ombudsman Service

magpiecottage

Bronniedog wrote: »

I have used this service to sort out problem with the Alliance & Leicester bank. The service has no 'teeth' and took ages to do very little. An attempt to get decent compensation was effectively blocked by the Ombusman Service and 3 requests for the case to be reviewed by a real 'Ombudsman' and not just a case worker were ignored. When I asked for a reason for this I received a three page reply of waffle and no real excuse. This is a 'service' which needs an Omdusman's review itself. Very poor.

An adjudicator has no power to prevent a referral to an Ombudsman after their decision if made by either party to the complaint. However they can suggest it they think it unlikely that the decision will be different and sometimes another adjudicator will look a case before it gets to an Ombudsman and see if they can resolve it more quickly.

magpiecottage

P-G wrote: »

FOS cost consumers nothing ?

Hmmm... I think its just possible that when the FOS runs short of cash, it puts up the charges to the firms. The firms then pass this on to the customers in dozens of subtle ways. Interest rate on your current account 0.1% rather than 0.2% perhaps

I think the consumer pays in the end.

I agree, except that IFAs have nowhere really to pass the cost on to and it is part of the burden that is slowly squeezing them out o the market although they have a far lower rate of complaints

P-G wrote: »

Better watch out, Natalie is busy appointing 3 new Senior Managers on 6 figure salaries, is currently advertising for Ombudsmen (no financial experience required at about £60k)

Damn - I'm massively over qualified then.

P-G wrote: »

FOS recruited 600 staff last year...

A lot of them have left from what I can make out.

P-G wrote: »

I like your style, by the way Magpie, your comments on this forum are good sense, judging by my experience of FOS

Thank you.

QUOTE=P-G;35168249]But the forum needs to suggest questions that Martin can ask the FOS when he meets them later this week...With your knowledge and experience, you may be able to suggest a few ?[/QUOTE]

Oh I could indeed - If Martin wants to pm me and ask I will oblige but I am will allow him to keep his powder dry so I am not going to put it on here - at least for now.

shortchanged_2

I for one won't bother using the FOS again, complete waste of time. I don't believe they understand the meaning of equal liability.
We were left out of pocket when a company we had agreed to use went into administration and we were not receiving the service we agreed to. We had taken out a credit agreement to finance this therefore section 75 was invoked.
We had nothing but grief and bully boy tactics from the finance company who were totally unethical throughout yet the FOS thought nothing of this.

The credit agreement was eventually cancelled however we were left heavily out of pocket as we had paid some money up front. This is where in my eyes the equal liabilty issue goes pear shaped. In my my eyes the FOS did not treat the finance company as if they were as equally liable as the service provider, so what is the point in having that piece of legislation.

I wish now I hadn't wasted my time with the FOS and had taken the matter to court instead and I know in the future I will not be going down the route of the FOS again if I believe I have a strong enough case.

I am not convinced with their impartiality. Look at the recent case with the Skipton Building Society where I believe they have sided with the Skipton being allowed to invoke their extreme circumstances clause in their contract, which basically heavily favours the contract in the Skiptons favour.

Interest rates have gone low, so what. That's the gamble customers have to take when they decide what mortage they take out.

Put it this way. Do customers have an extreme cirumstances clause in their part of the contract if interest rates go up to 10 or 12%? No, the bank or BS will be quick enough to repossess your house and chuck you out on the street if you can no longer afford your mortgage.

By the way I don't have a mortgage with the Skipton so I have no financial interest in that issue.

Theypicktheeasytargets

By coincidence I have just posted a letter to the Chief Ombudswoman (text below) concerning the ever-rising cost of car insurance. I would be very grateful if you could make this a two-pronged attack, as I suspect they will take your enquiry much more seriously than mine!

Dear .......

I would be grateful for your response to the issue of rising car insurance premiums. Both my car insurance renewal premium, and that of my wife, have risen year on year for the past decade in spite of the fact that we have made no claims. This year the rise was particularly excessive as my quote was 23% higher than last year, and my wife’s 54% higher. Much of this increase is due to the widespread practice of targeting customer “inertia” on renewal, however I have read in the press that the average car insurance premium is 11% higher this year, and the reason given by insurance companies is that this increase is a direct result of customer fraud. This strikes me as particularly ironic as I believe the major fraud here is perpetrated by the insurance companies in passing on these losses to honest policyholders. Crucially, if the consumer was able to choose not to purchase the product then this would not be an issue. It is however a legal requirement to have car insurance, and because of this the honest policyholder must be afforded stringent protection against such a breach of duty and trust by profiteering companies. The premium for the majority of (honest) policyholders must only reflect the level of legitimate claims.
In my view it is the duty of the insurance companies to detect, identify, prevent and prosecute fraudulent activity. They must know who is carrying out the fraud and how they are doing it, and direct their efforts at bringing it to an end. It is only because they have what they see as an easy option merely to re-distribute the losses among other policyholders (and so preserve profits) that they do not take this duty seriously. This is not acceptable. It is lazy and arrogant. Fraudulent losses should be seen primarily as the fault of the insurance company, the result of inadequate systems and checks, and as such the costs should be openly accounted for by the shareholders rather than the policyholders. It is only by doing this that the insurance companies will feel the need to tackle the problem effectively. The insurance companies should be permitted to invest in fraud prevention and detection measures using money from insurance premiums, but only where this can be shown to be effective in reducing these losses. Following the easy option of passing costs on to the policyholder rather than upsetting the shareholder should result in a penalty being applied to the insurer for permitting and tolerating rising levels of fraud.

siha

... It always takes far far too long. When they do find in your favour they don't seem to ever award you compensation. So the bank gets to illegally hold onto your money and earn interest on it whilst the mistake's being investigated. Eventually if the omb rule in your favour, all you get is your money back, nothing to help with the inconvenience of having to write letters and make phone calls, or being without the money the bank mistakenly removed from your account.
This means that there is no incentive for the bank to sort problems with their system out. Thanks to the omb the worse they can expect is the few people who do complain just get they money back if the bank makes an error. Its like me robbing peoples homes and only a small amount of house owners reporting it. When the police bang at my door all I do is give them the good back and everything's ok....:T

I don't know when can the FSA / OMB listen and change their rules not to be in favour of the financial industries... perhaps they are affraid to lose out the companies' business... But it's a NO LOSE game for them to make such a mistake and been on for years :mad:... If there is some penalties or compensation to pay out for their mistakes then you may see how much mistake those Financial business firms can do :j ... Thanks for your points, my Fool

bussybees

would the FSA be interested to know that a bank cannot prove or disprove the date a standing order was created? this bank took my instruction, but because they did not time and date stamp the request they are saying that the subsequent failure of the SO was not due to them!

also would the FSA like to know that another bank withdrew the regular savers account, because of "agreement default" only to re-instate when challenged, that the delay in payment was not the customers fault, but another bank...see above.

as it stands the second bank has reinstated the account, but the first bank has not acknowledged any error. i thought all banks had to establish a clear and unequivicable audit trail on customer accounts, surely this is what the FSA expects. any comments?

magpiecottage

Theypicktheeasytargets wrote: »

By coincidence I have just posted a letter to the Chief Ombudswoman (text below) concerning the ever-rising cost of car insurance. I would be very grateful if you could make this a two-pronged attack, as I suspect they will take your enquiry much more seriously than mine!

1. There is only a Chief Ombudsman, who happens to be a lady. The term "Ombudswoman" is not recognised.
2. The Chief Ombudsman would not normally look at individual cases
3. Even if she did, it would first have to be considered by an adjudicator
4. The adjudicator would not be handed the case to look at because you have not given the firm concerned a chance to look at the complaint first
5. You cannot ask the firm to look at the complaint because it is not a specific complaint against a specific insurer but a campaigning point
6. Even if it was against a specific complaint against one insurer, the decision about the premium they charge would be deemed the legitimate exercise of the insurer's commercial judgement - and therefore outside the remit of the Financial Ombudsman Service.

So I am afraid you have wasted your time.

magpiecottage

bussybees wrote: »

would the FSA be interested to know that a bank cannot prove or disprove the date a standing order was created? this bank took my instruction, but because they did not time and date stamp the request they are saying that the subsequent failure of the SO was not due to them!

also would the FSA like to know that another bank withdrew the regular savers account, because of "agreement default" only to re-instate when challenged, that the delay in payment was not the customers fault, but another bank...see above.

as it stands the second bank has reinstated the account, but the first bank has not acknowledged any error. i thought all banks had to establish a clear and unequivicable audit trail on customer accounts, surely this is what the FSA expects. any comments?

I doubt it but this thread is on the merits or otherwise of the Financial Ombudsman Service, not the Financial Services Authority.

Trying_to_be_good

Martin

Could you please suggest that the FOS put some more effort into clearing their backlog? I've been awaiting an Ombudsman review for nearly a year.

Thanks

Running_Man_2

I'd like to see the marketing of financial products adopting the sort of traffic light symbols etc, used voluntarily on food, to distinguish them from one another. The imposition of APRs was a good step forward, creating a common language which we can use to compare products, but unless you understand APRs, all they do is exactly that, compare products. They don't tell you if they're cheap, reasonable or expensive. The symbols could be benchmarked against the Bank of England rate and using traffic lights, or say the £££ symbols you commonly find in hotel directories for example, as well as the APRs (to distinguish those with the same symbol), would I believe simplify matters for the majority of the population who aren't bank workers or accountants.