FOS investigation- £500??

ASB1984

Hello,

A lot of posts of here say it will cost a bank £500 for a FOS investigation?

Is this true? where does it say this


thanks

dunstonh

Is this true? where does it say this

It it true. Although the FOS have the power to waive it and its only charged if it gets past any initial filter that is applied (to stop obvious malicious complaints).

Annisele

And from the horse's mouth, FOS says its case fee is £500 here (at least, it is after the first three cases - which for a bank will be almost all of them).

Premier_2

Of further interest may be this from a link contained in the link kindly provided by Annisele

when does a case fee become chargeable?

Fewer than one in six of the initial complaints and enquiries we receive at our front-line customer contact division become chargeable cases. The other complaints and enquiries usually involve matters we do not deal with – or matters that that can be resolved very early on, just by clarifying misunderstandings and sorting things out informally.

A case fee becomes "chargeable" when our customer contact division passes a complaint on for further work to one of our casework teams of adjudicators. The fee does not actually become payable until the case is settled and closed. Our finance team sends out an invoice for the case fee to the business concerned at the end of the month in which the case is closed.

However, all businesses are entitled to a number of "free" cases. We do not charge businesses for the [FONT=MetaBookLF-Italic,MetaBookLF-Italic][FONT=MetaBookLF-Italic,MetaBookLF-Italic]first three [/FONT][/FONT]chargeable cases closed during the (financial) year. We charge only for the [FONT=MetaBookLF-Italic,MetaBookLF-Italic][FONT=MetaBookLF-Italic,MetaBookLF-Italic]fourth [/FONT][/FONT](and any subsequent) case.

http://www.financialombudsmanservice.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/QG1.pdf

Premier_2

This appears to be the formal definition of what is deemed chargeable (albeit from a consultation paper at the time)

Chargeable case

3.42 A chargeable case is defined in the draft rules as any complaint referred to the
FOS, apart from those where the Ombudsman considers it apparent from the
complaint, as received, and any final response which has been issued by the
firm, that the complaint should not proceed because:
• the complainant is not an eligible complainant; or
• the complaint does not fall within the jurisdiction of the FOS (as described
at DISP 2) or is outside the time limits set out in DISP 1.7; or
• the Ombudsman considers that the complaint should be dismissed without
consideration of its merits in accordance with DISP 3.5; or
• the Ombudsman considers, at any stage, that the complaint should be
dismissed under DISP 3.5.1 (2) on the grounds that it is frivolous or
vexatious.

Firms will not be charged case fees in respect of complaints falling into the
categories described above or in respect of enquiries. Cases will become

chargeable on closure and firms will be invoiced for these quarterly in arrears.

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/cp/cp74.pdf

Annisele

Yep, it works the way the consultation paper proposed. The definition of a chargeable case didn't change. FOS doesn't tend to be too keen on deciding anything is frivolous or vexatious though

Full details are in the FEES section of the FSA handbook, with the case fee provisions set out at FEES 5.5.