MSE News: Financial complaints up 54% with Lloyds TSB scoring worst

Former_MSE_Helen

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"PPI gripes boost the complaints made to the Financial Ombudsman Service to 150,000 in first half of 2011 ..."

Read the full story:

Financial complaints up 54% with Lloyds TSB scoring worst

dtaylor84

I think the stats with PPI complaints excluded would be more interesting, really.

opinions4u

dtaylor84 wrote: »

I think the stats with PPI complaints excluded would be more interesting, really.

I think they would continue to show that Barclays and Santander are still way out there for being poor.

molerat

Santander and Barclays have the highest number of non PPI complaints, Santander has 3rd highest % upheld at 41%, just above the average, but Barclays comes out top with only 14% upheld. The figures quoted in the article though are as usual designed to put things in the worst light and taking no account of customer base, yet another flawed sensationalist MSE news article.

Consumerist

The numbers don't seem to make sense.

Lloyds TSB had 84% of 16,965 PPI complaints upheld i.e. about 14,251 (±85) PPI complaints were upheld.

But, overall, Lloyds TSB had 63% of 19,569 total complaints upheld i.e. only 12,328 (±98) complaints upheld altogether.

How can there be more PPI complaints upheld than the overall number upheld ?

Edit
I don't seem to be able to find the complaints data on the FOS Complaints Data page. Perhaps there is a problem with their data.

chambta

What won't be revealed is what each bank counts as a complaint. Within RBS it used to be the case that staff were urged to log complaints for absolutely anything. Indeed there were unofficial 'targets' for them.

Consumerist

chambta wrote: »

What won't be revealed is what each bank counts as a complaint. Within RBS it used to be the case that staff were urged to log complaints for absolutely anything. Indeed there were unofficial 'targets' for them.

The FOS can only report on complaints that it receives.

It may be a bit of good PR for a bank to regard any enquiry as a complaint so that it can report a high percentage of "complaints" being resolved internally. e.g. NatWest wants to be regarded as a "helpful" bank in its advertising.

Consumerist

Ok. Got the FOS data and it makes a bit more sense as below.

                New complaints  | Upheld complaints
                 Total    PPI   |   Overall   PPI
-----------------------------------------------------
MBNA            12,500   8,551  |    87%      89%
Black Horse      3,721   3,533  |    79%      82%
Lloyds TSB      19,569  16,965  |    63%      84%
RBS              5,863   5,225  |    45%      55%
Santander        6,434   1,659  |    44%      52%
HBOS            13,021   9,945  |    44%      47%
Barclays        16,864  12,862  |    43%      52%
Natwest          5,628   4,234  |    38%      54%
HSBC            10,072   8,791  |    20%      18%
Capital One      7,160   6,752  |    14%      13%
Nationwide       2,309   1,582  |    14%       6%

Total overall
 complaints    149,925  98,632       47%      51%

There is no connection between the number of new complaints received and the percentage of complaints upheld.

I do think the table could have been a bit better presented in the article, however.