What can the FOS do?

MusicalLawyer

When making a complaint about a company, what can the FOS do?

Do they have the power to deem agreements as being not executed properly, and deem them void and unenforceable?

I made a complaint in October (which is being investigated currently) and was just wondering what their powers were, so we can see what we may have to do next.

chanz4

No only a court can

MusicalLawyer

If the FOS agree with us, is it more likely that we would win in court?
We already have Trading Standards on our side.

jonesMUFCforever

Depends - care to tell us a bit more?

MusicalLawyer

The complaint we made was regarding a credit agreement for a loan from Barclays, to use to fund a course with Train2Game. The loan was all done through Train2Game as they are partnered with Barclays. The loan amount is around £5k and the money goes straight to T2G. We don't see a penny of it, so it isn't like we have their £5k before anyone starts saying things about that.

What happened is, we cancelled / withdrew from the agreement the following day. However Train2Game did not action this. They failed, in the first instance, to leave us with a copy of the agreement, and also failed to leave us cancellation notices and so forth. We were in touch with Trading Standards, who said that it is those companies who are in thw wrong. There is nothing TS can do for us as they are currently investigating T2G anyway. We have letters from TS stating that T2G are in the wrong and the agreement is unenforceable etc.

MusicalLawyer

The argument is that we didn't cancel properly, as we called them up the following day asking how to cancel. They apparently have no record of the call however we have proof from our phone records, though they're saying we could have left a message - it was a 3 minute call.

They're claiming they posted us a copy of the agreement that same month, however we didn't receive a copy until 4 months later - to which we wrote a cancellation letter to them as it was the first one we'd received. They can't prove that they had sent the previous one.

Trading Standards said that the phone call we made to them was cancellation under the new rules which came in just 2 weeks earlier in Feb 2011. (Not 100% sure what those rules are though)

The agreement was signed etc in my OH's house.

jonesMUFCforever

In that case if you have exhausted Barclays finance complaints procedure you can take your case to the ombudsman.

MusicalLawyer

We already took it to the Ombudsman, I was just enquiring as to what their powers what, and what they could do etc.

ILW

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

We already took it to the Ombudsman, I was just enquiring as to what their powers what, and what they could do etc.

I believe they send a stern letter.

jonesMUFCforever

Barclays are party to the ombudsman scheme and have to adhere to its decision.
If you disagree with the final ombudsman decision you have the right to carry on and sue but Barclayas don't.