Have your say on the Financial Ombudsman Service

moorsey

ISAs, ISAs, ISAs, ISAs, ISAs, ISAs, ISAs, ISAs, ISAs, ISAs!!!!!!!!!!

This needs sorting out big time. Nationwide have been sitting on my cash since 12th May, still not ISA. The worrying thing is, they have 95% of my money, out of ALL OF MY MONEY. I have no access to it while Nationwide do whatever they have to do to "process" an ISA

The FO WAS quick to respond to my complaint to be fair, but, nothing they could do. I have to give Nationwide a ridiculous amount of time to sort out this issue, so essentially, a waste of time.

I don't have much hope that the FO would be able to do anything even after this period of time.

But, the whole ISA system is a complete mess, may not be entirely down to the FO to sort out though.

missrlr

Slow, biased and seem to make decisions based on interprertation of law not on fairness or specific set of circumstances. Utterly unhelpful in writing BUT willing to be more forthcoming on the phone, when you can get hold of them!

amcy

The FOS is completely in the pocket of the financial companies and a waste of everyone's money. They investigated an endowment missell for me and concluded it was missold. However, they refused to look at the promised of performance we were given and instead used a standard formula to show that we were not worse off than had we had a repayment mortgage, so the conclusion was "missold - yes, compensation - no".They flatly refused to discuss the matter and even told me that I needed to complain to the FSA because the FOS's hands were tied by them (which the FSA denied).

The conclusion was that I spent days on proving I was missold and all the FOS would do was use a standard formula, ask irrelevant questions, delay responding, not answer questions and eventually I had to give up.

They are worse than a chocolate teapot.

sovietsong

Stop trying to kid people into believing that your problems (primarily slowness) are due to increased workload (new complaints). Whilst you may, currently, be receiving more new cases than previously, the major problem here is lack of resources, primarly people.

Friday_Girl

The person acting as the 'Ombudsman' doesn't actually get involved until all the groundwork has been done by the adjudicator dealing with your case.
When I first contacted the FSO, the adjudicator wrote and told me he had written to the Nationwide and would be in touch when he had heard back from them. He replied to me about 1 month later, saying he had reviewed the case, and detailed what he saw. It was all factually incorrect .......
Eventually the Ombudsman did award me £500 for inconvenience, but not the thousands Nationwide had allowed to be unlawfully removed from my account due to their blatant error, and said if I wanted to persue that, I would have to take it to court!
It just kept eating into me, so a year later I proceeded with court action and requested all the communication between the two parties from both the FSO and Nationwide. Nationwide ignored my letter!
When I received all the communication from the FSO and Nationwide, there was no initial letter from the adjudicator to Nationwide, as he had said in my letter, and there were comments in Nationwide's letters along the lines of 'As you say she would be better to take the matter to court' - yet obvoiusly no such thing in writing from the adjudicator.
On receiving all the correspondence, I emailed the adjudicator and said there were some letters missing, he told me in writing I had everything, once again I emailed to say the initial letter he wrote was missing, once again he replied I had everything ............
His dealings with Nationwide were obviously done over the phone to avoid any incriminating written evidence, he was verbally passing on information I had supplied, and Nationwide proved this by responding in writing!

When someone crooked is the first point of call in such an organisation, what hope is there for justice for us?

snorbans

Financial institutions offering fixed term savings should be forced to provide notification of maturity to the customer by post (and email, if appropriate). Any less positive method (eg leaving a note on an on-line banking system) reinforces the chances the message will not be received and no action taken - to the institution's benefit.

The FOS process should be modified to copy the financial institution's submission to the complainant, so both parties have full disclosure.

NicksChick

The details of this case are complex, however the gist of it is that I am taking action against the HSBC and my time is running out. The six year period for complaints and actions is up in September 2010. For the last year I have been trying to get the HSBC to deal with my complaint via my solicitors at a cost of £5000 to date. Despite the promises on the HSBC web site that they will respond in 5 days in some circumstances and in 7 in others they have consistantly failed to respond at all !! Further a request for detailed file information via the freedom of information act has completely failed to result in ALL the relevant information I know they have being disclosed.

My complaint is this - if I go down the FOS route I will CERTAINLY miss the closing of the legal route in September, but there is no method for me to force the HSBC to respond and the FOS won't talk to me or my legal representatives until I have closed off the formal complaint route. I am in a catch 22 situation here, there is £50,000 at stake and I don't know where to go next.

So my question to the FOS is which procedure of theirs is supposed to protect Joe Public in this situation, because I don't think they have one !

m1618

Special ISA accounts offered by banks/building societies never seem to have the top rates of interest.

This means that the bank/building society is getting some of the advantage of the interest being tax free. It shouldn't be that way.

One suggestion is that ISA only accounts should be abolished, and that any account on offer can be subscribed to as an ISA (subect to all the usual ISA limits/conditions).

Savers are having a VERY rough time right now with most interest rates being below the rate of inflation.

I want the savers to get the full benefit of ISA legislation. I do not think the already rich banks should be making more profits at the expence of savers.

Reader1

They have quite a good service but they take too long to reply...up to 9 months ? That's a bit ridiculous.

fthl

Further a request for detailed file information via the freedom of information act has completely failed

The FOI Act does not apply to HSBC, you will need to do a SAR or a disclosure request under the CPRs.