Have your say on the Financial Ombudsman Service

The_Aussie

The original concept for the FSO was good (and required). But in practice, it's not working fairly and is far too bias in favour of the financial organisations.

The good aspect(s) - the website is easy to follow - everything is fairly easy to find and the form submission is straight-forward.

The bad aspect(s) based on my own personal experiences of about six submissions. There appears to be no standard process - some Adjudicators will acknowledge receipt of letters - others do not. Some Adjudicators will use postal mail whilst others use email and/or the telephone.
It takes far too long to get a resolution (I have one case in front of the Ombudsman for over a year with no progress reports - in the meantime, I am the one out of pocket pending the conclusion). The Adjudicators always favour the financial organisations - maybe because it is reported that FSO is mainly staffed with people who previously worked in those same organisations. Adjudicators allow financial organisations a huge amount of time to respond - yet set time limits on individuals to reply. If you fail to respond within a particular time limit, they then consider the case closed.
I could go on and on .... but hopefully my comments match with those posted by others on this Forum.

In my own experience, I have observed financial organisations failing to respond to correpondence - I had Barclays ignore every single letter that I wrote despite sending them Recorded Delivery. Financial organisations have now realised that it is pointless employing people to address complaints as that costs them money. Better to ignore the customer and see if they escalate to the FSO - if they do not, then nothing to do. If there is an escalation then they only need to write the odd letter/phone call to the FSO and possibly pay a little bit of compensation for poor customer service which is far cheaper than employing staff to respond to complaints. The FSO appear to allow this to happen probably because it gives them job security and this is what then creates the backlog of work which will take them years to clear.

In the meantime, its Joe Public that pays the price for a lack of service, absence of customer support when things go wrong and hardly any chance of a fair resolution when a complaint finally surfaces in the FSO. I await the outcome of the FSO/MSE meeting with interest.

In my opinion, the FSO needs to crack down on the financial organisations to make them accept their responsibilities - such as providing Final Response letters etc. And award a monetary value when people have to send protracted correspondence to financial organisations only to have them ignore it.
Also, make it a requirement that financial organisations respond to complaints via Recorded Delivery - I have examples when companies have claimed that the one and only letter that they did write must have 'got lost in the post' and the FSO believes them. In the current climate, very few letters are lost in the post and yet it always appears to happen to financial organisations when they send one vital letter to a customer.

dacouch

I like that they have previous cases listed so customers / financial organisations can view them, however the search system is not very good which makes finding relevant cases cumbersome. If they changed the system so you could just have returns on either a specific product eg Home Insurance or it you could just have returns on say Insurance it would make it easier to find relevant information

moneysavingnewbie1

thecornflake wrote: »

The fact someone drove into my car while it was parked, my insurance company took 2 years to agree a 50/50 liability and then removed 5 years off my no claims. Apparently they have no jurisdiction over no claims or liability dceisions, but noone else does either so my only choice is private court action :mad:

but is it their fault if they have no jurisdiction? they can only deal with certain cases if its out of their remit theres nothing they can do. cant tell you whose fault that would be though. fsa?

moneysavingnewbie1

The_Aussie wrote: »

The original concept for the FSO was good (and required). But in practice, it's not working fairly and is far too bias in favour of the financial organisations.

The good aspect(s) - the website is easy to follow - everything is fairly easy to find and the form submission is straight-forward.

The bad aspect(s) based on my own personal experiences of about six submissions. There appears to be no standard process - some Adjudicators will acknowledge receipt of letters - others do not. Some Adjudicators will use postal mail whilst others use email and/or the telephone.
It takes far too long to get a resolution (I have one case in front of the Ombudsman for over a year with no progress reports - in the meantime, I am the one out of pocket pending the conclusion). The Adjudicators always favour the financial organisations - maybe because it is reported that FSO is mainly staffed with people who previously worked in those same organisations. Adjudicators allow financial organisations a huge amount of time to respond - yet set time limits on individuals to reply. If you fail to respond within a particular time limit, they then consider the case closed.
I could go on and on .... but hopefully my comments match with those posted by others on this Forum.

In my own experience, I have observed financial organisations failing to respond to correpondence - I had Barclays ignore every single letter that I wrote despite sending them Recorded Delivery. Financial organisations have now realised that it is pointless employing people to address complaints as that costs them money. Better to ignore the customer and see if they escalate to the FSO - if they do not, then nothing to do. If there is an escalation then they only need to write the odd letter/phone call to the FSO and possibly pay a little bit of compensation for poor customer service which is far cheaper than employing staff to respond to complaints. The FSO appear to allow this to happen probably because it gives them job security and this is what then creates the backlog of work which will take them years to clear.

In the meantime, its Joe Public that pays the price for a lack of service, absence of customer support when things go wrong and hardly any chance of a fair resolution when a complaint finally surfaces in the FSO. I await the outcome of the FSO/MSE meeting with interest.

In my opinion, the FSO needs to crack down on the financial organisations to make them accept their responsibilities - such as providing Final Response letters etc. And award a monetary value when people have to send protracted correspondence to financial organisations only to have them ignore it.

Also, make it a requirement that financial organisations respond to complaints via Recorded Delivery - I have examples when companies have claimed that the one and only letter that they did write must have 'got lost in the post' and the FSO believes them. In the current climate, very few letters are lost in the post and yet it always appears to happen to financial organisations when they send one vital letter to a customer.

sorry but most of that was total rubbish. my firne dworks for them and he says its the fsa that sets what powers fso has. so take it out on the fsa.

secondly "fso believes them" comment: not necessarily but if its an independant impartial organisation then doesnt it have to see evidence from whichever partys is making a submission? how many people do you think will lie and say they never received a letter? why should the fso believe one party of another especially if the postcode and everything is right on the letter and every other letter ever sent were received. im not saying a financial organisaiton wont lie about sending letters out its possible but what are the fso supposed to do? assume on whose side?

thirdly "adjudicators used to work for them" thats complete pants as i know someone who works there and he said the majority of them are lawyers or educated in law. i think fso does a good job and i think people on here whinge because they think fso is a consumer champion and therefore will always find intheir favour- well its NOT. its an alternative to court and it reslves disputes fairly. and you wouldnt bloomin swear at a judge would you but my friend sys he gets that now and again from Joe Idiot Public.

richie72

I have been waiting for a decision since mid 2009 when I complained about RSA. More Than took my car in for repair and their garage filled the engine with water. Now, over a year later I'm still waiting, is this what the FSO is all about? I wish I had gone to small claims court and not bothered with them.

moneysavingnewbie1

the one problem with fso i would say is that because they want more consumers to use their service they promote themselves everywhere (i saw them at a fair once with a stall). but then people think they're a consumer champion and will fight against the bank for them. but they cant do that as they're impartial. people need to know they're not bloody citizens advice bureau and cant write umpteen letters to banks on behalf of the consumer. whats impartial about that? load sof people have had money awarded int heir favour my friend has said he got someone 20k a few weeks back so its not true that they always find in favour of the banks.

hedger44

We are currently asking the FOS to look at a grievance which we have. To my surprise, on the phone to me, and in writing, the person dealing with it has initiated arguments on behalf of the institution involved. These arguments have not been made by the other side, and are not relevant and/or not able to be substantiated, yet he uses them in their defence.
He says he cannot tell if their case is true, he does not know which of us to believe, us or the institution, so he is siding with them.

Another possible problem is the calibre of person dealing with the complaint. I had to explain something 3 times before he grasped the point which I was making, which was not particularly difficult. Also, he seemed to be starting from the position that I was in the wrong.

I expect an ombudsman service to be impartial and competent.

moneysavingnewbie1

richie72 wrote: »

I have been waiting for a decision since mid 2009 when I complained about RSA. More Than took my car in for repair and their garage filled the engine with water. Now, over a year later I'm still waiting, is this what the FSO is all about? I wish I had gone to small claims court and not bothered with them.

errrr go on then? except fso is freeeeeeee :jand you want to take advantage of that rather than pay court fee and then fight it yourself. bloomin heck people take advantage of fso and then moan at the same time! wouldnt you have to wait for a court date too? and possibly more than one?

Freddie_Snowbits

The test for every case should be.

If you had made £50,0000, would you bring a claim?

Most people would keep the £50,000

abtg_2

I would like the Financial Ombudsman to investigate how much money is being made by forcing customers to be on hold on 0845 numbers while trying to bring an issue to the attention of their bank.