Have your say on the Financial Ombudsman Service

Widelats

used them, or should i say tried my best to understand ther massively drawn out procedures, and tried to make sense of their jargon, and tried to make sense of why they thought i was treated fairly when i wasn't, it cost me money, time, patience, and i think they are a massive waste of time.

i think they do whatever they like, they don't care as long as their wages are paid on time.

tifo

Widelats wrote: »

used them, or should i say tried my best to understand ther massively drawn out procedures, and tried to make sense of their jargon

I've tried for a long time.

Initially, it was with my default charges claims and why they can pay money to a third party they cannot include within the complaint, why they can award me 3 different amounts of compensation for the same type of default and why they can ignore relevant law when they want for my case but when it comes to the bank, they use the same law to justify their biased decision.

Why they say mortgage arrears charges are not within their remit yet can decide that they are fair (without having investigated anything) and where does it say this within their guidelines, to which they point me to the FSA handbook which actually says arrears charges must reflect costs.

The end point is, once they make a biased decision, you're stuck with it. And the banks will then use with forever.

Can a consumer take the FOS to court (not that they may succeed) if they are suffering losses as a result of biased decisions? In my case, I lost all the default charges and interest the banks offered to send to my fully settled account at the DCA and the FOS said this is OK, I am not entitled to the refund because I did not pay the bank and legal assignment does not matter to them. The total for me from about 4-5 decisions is/was over £6k.

Then there is the current complaint against mortgage arrears charges where the FOS insist they cannot investigate them but say they are fair as all the banks charge around the same (the market rate). Hence I lose my refund and the bank says the FOS agree they are fair. And on securitisation, the FOS won't look into it but I've asked why the bank signs all its letters "as administrator".

magpiecottage

Obviously, I do not know the exact details of your case.

However, there are two problems. The first is a lack of knowledge stemming from a difficulty in recruiting and retaining adjudicators of sufficient quality in the first place.

The second (which is largely a cause of the first) is the pressure that they are under. This is compounded by a system which means they either get paid per case "resolved" or get a bonus based on their "productivity".

This incentive structure seems at odds with the FSA's insistence of banning commission on investments but either way, these conspire to channel adjudicators down a line of least resistance.

This may mean that banks are putting up various arguments and persuading FOS to reject complaints whilst IFAs, who generally look after their clients, find a complaint about something that happened 20 years ago goes against them because the adjudicator was in short trousers at the time does not understand the circumstances in which the recommendation was made.

magpiecottage

tifo wrote: »

Can a consumer take the FOS to court (not that they may succeed) if they are suffering losses as a result of biased decisions?

Not really.

In theory you could seek a judicial review but it would be very limited in what it could consider. It would not look at the merits of your case and would probably cost about £50K.

However, you can still take the firm against whom you made the complaint to court - even if FOS has found against you. The court would then look at the merits of your claim. If you won, any redress would be awarded against the firm, not FOS.

However, such a case is not without risk. A claim of over £5K would not go through the small claims process and you might have to pay the other side's costs if you lost.

tifo

magpiecottage wrote: »

However, you can still take the firm against whom you made the complaint to court - even if FOS has found against you. The court would then look at the merits of your claim.

However, such a case is not without risk. A claim of over £5K would not go through the small claims process and you might have to pay the other side's costs if you lost.

There is no risk in the case but because of the FOS, the default charges/PPI have gone over 6 years ago and the bank either points to the FOS decision or makes an offer of £0 as there is nothing to refund from the last 6 years.

Many of my cases took nearly 2 years at the FOS because I had biased decisions which had to be taken further up the organisation.

At the end of the day, if i've paid the charges/PPI and have settled the debts in full (with charges/PPI) there is no reason for the bank not to refund me directly. The FOS has no right having the refund paid to a third party to whom no debt is owed. This was proven to them.

I've therefore 'lost' the total amount of the refunds due to me from the banks because the FOS made a wrong decision. I have it in writing from the Ombudsman that she doesn't 'care' about legal processes and called them 'irrelevant', whilst it was highly relevant. The same Ombudsman made the same decision on 3 complaints. In a way, I ended up paying the debts twice, once to the DCA and once to the bank.

A.A_2

A man I know who has Autism has been driven close to dispair by the FOS regarding a preliminary decision using SECTION 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. He was misled when buying a new car and cancelled the deal very quickly, only to be ignored by the dealer who sacked the salesman and turned his back as though nothing had happened!
Aftercomplaining to the car manufacturer, it stepped in and said "drive the car until we find you another". The first replacement was visibly damaged upon delivery and so another was reasonably requested to the reply that a small cash discount on his next (same make of) car would be substituted. The credit card company to whom he complained made one phone call and took the side of the dealer. The FOS said they would deal with it but displayed a lack of knowledge of the motor industry at the Adjudicator level and has 'adjusted the truth' at the Ombudsman stage. The person at the centre of this went to the extent of asking the car manufacturer to refute his assertion that he was given use of the car as a courtesy and the manufacturer has kept silent. The Ombudsman has penalised this man by £6500 for 6 months depreciation (the time it took the car maker to decide that it couldn't or wouldn't replace the car), has allowed the dealer - via the bank - to keep well over £5000 (3 years)interest on the cash price of the car and ignored the costs incurred by alternative transport required (consequential loss). It makes this very straightforward person look like liar and it would have been better for him to have given-up the fight and traded-in the car back to the same dealer at a loss over two years ago!

There is apparently no redress?

I cannot understand how the Sale of Goods Act can be used by the FOS to mitigate the liability of the credit card co. when the card co. has and indemnity and the dealer - as is correct - will eventually bear the cost.

spyrothedragon_2

I lodged a complaint against RBS last October, which listed at least 10 separate incidents. Many of these are similar to the examples quoted on the FOS website where people have been awarded compensation classed as "modest" (up to £300), "significant" (£300 - £1000) or "exceptional" (£1000 or more). The original FOS adjudicator asked some stupid questions and I realised she only had half of my paperwork so I had to send everything again. My case was then passed to another adjudicator who casually informed me he'd look into the complaints he considered to be most important, sweeping the rest aside. I was offered £250 as a distress and inconvenience payment and RBS got to keep a few hundred pounds of mine. That worked out at just over £20 per complaint and I was left badly out of pocket, so I refused to sign the acceptance form and demanded that my case was referred to an ombudsman. Since then I've sent a couple more emails, with my comments added to a cut & paste of the guidelines of the FOS website. Basically I'm telling them how to do their job! I'm sticking to my guns and insisting that I receive an individual sum for each and every one of my complaints that they decide to uphold, plus an allowance for wasted time, in accordance with their own rules. I feel I've been forced into doing this, because the initial offer smacked of someone skimming over the front page, printing a standard letter, and trying to fob me off with a token payment. I'll reserve judgement on the FOS until I have their final say, but up to this point I'm disgusted with them.
I have an email from them on 30th June to say they'd be back in touch "in the next few days" - will post the verdict here....

spyrothedragon_2

Update to my last post:
After I refused the insulting offer first time round and requested that an Ombudsman looks at my case, my adjudicator was preparing a review before passing it upstairs. The trained chimp I’d been dealing with left in August to be replaced by someone who at least sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. This adjudicator asked the right questions and requested as much evidence as I could give, with several things I hadn’t considered. He went back to RBS as part of his review and they upped their offer by £90, to a whopping £340. (This was volunteered by RBS, not a decision by the FOS). Not surprisingly I told them where they could shove it. My adjudicator wrote to me last week to say he’d almost finished preparing the review of my case before it was passed to an Ombudsman, and gave me one last opportunity to submit any more information, which I did today with an email. He replied to that half an hour later: “Once the fourteen day period expires...your complaint will be put forward for an ombudsman's final decision. Unfortunately, due to the volume of complaints, there is currently a five to six month queue for a final decision”.

So, after lodging a catalogue of complaints to RBS in August 2010 and being stonewalled by them for 3 months at each of the 4 separate addresses I wrote to (local branch, head office, business accounts, and customer relations) I first went to the FOS in October 2010. They lost half my case notes, ignored most of my evidence, tried to concentrate on what they called “the main issues” and sweep the “lesser” complaints under the carpet, tried to offer one payment as a catch-all (not a separate award for each complaint they upheld) and contradicted almost all of the guidance notes on their own website.[SIZE=+0] [/SIZE]I’m now on my 4th adjudicator, and I’m told I could wait until summer 2012 for a decision?

I’m absolutely raging! :mad: There’s no way I’ll ever back down and accept the RBS offer, not after all they’ve put us through, but I can’t afford to wait that long for justice. The whole system is geared up to discourage you at every stage, in the hope you’ll eventually give up and go away. The FOS are useless, a waste of space. I’d have been better off robbing the bank last August and taking back what they owe me. If I had I’d probably be out of jail by now!

catmiaow

They take too long and have used them twice and they have been no help whatsoever, so a waste of time.

rock-on_2

Still waiting for them to sort out a finance company. Adjudicator phoned to say they had sorted it but they hadn't even looked at all the information. Think they have only looked at the first paragraph of the complaint and not bothered with the rest. Bit disappointed.