Have your say on the Financial Ombudsman Service

P-G_2

I have now looked more carefully at the FOS website and I can't find current reference to the Service Review Team. This was the department which handled complaints about FOS service standards (they were not allowed to look at the merits of decisions...no one can do this..."the ombudsman's decison is final").

If this department has gone, it may be a good thing. My experience of them was appalling. The quote below is a verbatim extract from a member of the SRT replying to my request for a better explanation of the amount of tax deducted on an award.

"Having read through (your emails) I have nothing at all to add to what I have previously said, and in particular I am at a complete loss to know what further elucidation or explanation I could possibly hope to proffer. I am not prepared to devote additional time and effort towards further elucidation which I am far from confident will meet with either your understanding or acceptance"

I was only asking for an explanation I could understand !

As it turned out, everything this gentleman said, and everything the Ombudsman said about the subject under discussion (taxation of awards) turned out to be wrong. No tax was payable at all. FOS paid compensation.

Lets hope that the "Heads of Casework" who appear to be taking over complaints handling can do better. I should say, that generally everyone I dealt with was very polite. Its the arrogant attitude of this person that is so wrong. I formed the impression that the SRT was there to defend and justify the Ombudsman rather than investigate the problem independently.

magpiecottage

There is an interesting article in Money Marketiing (one of the main IFA trade journals) here.

It seems to me that with no, or minimal, financial/legal qualifications/experience, one of two things is likely to happen:

Either they will have the wool pulled over their eyes by banks and insurers, or they will find some reason to uphold it because they feel sorry for the consumer.

Unfortunately FOS is under an enormous amount of pressure but getting in staff who are not up to the job is a false economy because it results in more cases being put to an Ombudsman and slows things down even more.

P-G_2

You are correct Magpie,
Today's Ombudsman News (No.88) contains an article by Natalie Ceeney where she confirms that more cases are being passed to the Ombudsmen for decisions.
FOS comes under the Freedom of Information Act in October 2011, I think. They could be busy !

letdown

to all those who think the FOS have let them down - try this one.

pursude in a criminal manner by the Halifax for 6 years, for arrears they eventually admitted only showed to exist due to a printing error on their part, the FOS failed and refuse to take any equitable action on their conduct, the Halifax took two years to provide a response to my protests, then provided false accountacy claiming it proved the amounts were owed, failed to comply with the Banking Code, failed to comply with a request as made under the Data Protection Act, failed to comply with a Court Order they respond to an Independant Audit of my account, agreed that the doubled portions of my monthly payments neeed not be paid until arrears proven to exist.

admitting to their error the Halifax corrected their error by crediting me with the incorrect interest charged and debitting me with all their Costs, incurred in pursuing none-existant arrears.

refusing to accept this as an equitable correction they then re-summonsed me for non-payment of the unentitled to increased portions of monthly payments, repossessed my home adding a further £20k of costs. In total 9 years of stress, costs and losses through refusing to pay monies not in fact owed.

The FOS refuse to answer direct questions as to why they think I should be liable for the Halifax`s Costs never mind my own, refuse to comment on the Halifax`s criminal behaviour as above.

Failed to apply the required due care and attention to evidence supplied, misquoted amounts, dates and facts all to the benefit of the Halifax and despite myself incurring Costs and losses into six figures suggested I accept their recommended compensation of £1300.

The FOS refuse to investigate my charges that they failed to provide an equitable correction despite taking two years to complete their examination, refuse to answer why they think that the innocent party should be liable for all Costs incurred.

On such evidence it is little wonder the Banks continue to abuse customers rights aware that the FOS are not interested in ensuring they do the the job the were set up to do.

P-G_2

There is now another forum on MSE about FOS matters. MSE has arranged for the Chief Ombudsman to answer questions posed by MSE readers/members. The other forum seems to be the place to submit any questions.

I am not allowed to post links...but its here somewhere. Perhaps MSE could add a link ?

magpiecottage

Its here but people seem to be asking specific questions about their own cases.

divento

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.[/QUOTE I am putting together an article which focuses on the incompetence of the FOS, can you please contact me on this subject? editor@divento.com

divento

I think the timing is ripe for a piece on FOS as for various reasons they will be under some pressure in the first quarter of this year,


I am in the midst of writing an article on the incompetence of the FOS.

Having looked through a fair amount of material, I have decide to focus initially on the incompetence of FOS staff as this is far more straightforward to prove.

On this subject I wonder;


Did they send you any documents with obvious errors in them; such as typographical errors or factual errors?
Did they reproduce information that you gave them but introduce mistakes into it?
Did they ignore or obviously sidestep any points or questions in your letters?
Did they take an unreasonable length of time, at any stage to reply to your letters?
Also it would be useful to know who dealt with your enquiry, (I suspect there was a succession of people which does not add to efficiency)

I have a letter in front of me from FOS in which the name of the claimant is incorrectly spelled; and a letter from an adjudicator with two typos in it. In such cases one has every right to question the judgment of someone, especially on a matter which requires some precision.

If it's easier for you, you can send the letters to me by email or by fax

Kind Regards


Fiona Lazareff
fiona@divento.com

mo786uk

I read the FOS newsletter at work

By the sounds of it the number of complaints they recieve to deal with is far outweighing the staff the they

They also give examples of complaints they deal with and it sounds like they get a lot of chancers/idiots to deal with. That said some of their decisions have surprised me when they have favoured with the consumer

nodebtforme

Quote: "We're meeting it this week, and would love your feedback on what issues it should address.

Have you heard of it? Have you used it? What financial problems are you having you'd like it to help with?

Please report you comments and experiences below."

Three experiences, and a request:

1. They take too long, and aren't always accurate. I have a current issue which has been under consideration for a year. To start with, they said it wasn't within their remit. Then, I persuaded them it was. But they still haven't come to a decision. Are they understaffed? Is it their covert policy to operate in such a way that they discourage any but the most intrepid from pursuing complaints? I could so easily have given up, had I accepted their initial view.

2. They make bizarre decisions - I've just made a complaint about advertising, which I thought was clearly misleading. They didn't agree.

3. Years ago, I brought a mis-selling complaint about Equitable Life to them. They rejected it, believing the company's version of events against mine, but not asking Equitable for evidence to back up their position. I did in fact get the company to accept a missell, but it was entirely by my own efforts. No help from FOS whatsoever. I suspect they were inundated with Equitable complaints at the time, but that is really no excuse for not giving everyone proper consideration. They were dealing with peoples' life savings, after all.

4. I would like you to raise the question of banks allowing elderly customers to keep their money languishing in poor-interest accounts without spelling out the alternatives in easily-comprehensible quantifiable language. The banks should have a clear duty of care, especially to the elderly. They should spell it out: "Do you realise you could be earning £1,000 interest if you moved it to a different account?" Not just sending small-print list of the available accounts. This is simply not good enough. If there was a proper duty of care, complaints against this disgraceful profiteering would have a chance of success.