Share your stories on PPI Reclaiming claims handlers

PPIReviewer

I work in PPI review and have literally signed up because I need to make you aware of something I'm sure you already know. Going through a CMC has no benefit to your case whatsoever. If anything they are a hindrance.

Claiming on PPI is a free service anybody can do yet a CMC will take massive percentages of your money for sending a letter of which you can.

Huge amounts of CMCs send in letters which are copied and pasted, have loan numbers with start dates that are incorrect and have information and complaint allegations which have no bearing on the specific customers circumstance which can result in the wrong outcome.

Many CMC advise their client that if their bank call them to discuss the loan to advise them they can't speak and if they want to discuss the case to call the CMc. Most banks will only deal with the customer over the phone and won't call the CMC which results in the bank having to investigate purely on what the CMc has said which could be incorrect and also they might not have all the required info needing meaning a thorough review cannot be completed. Failing to discuss your case with the complaint handler will potentially cause detriment to your case.

dazla

Clouderash wrote: »

I'm waiting to hear back from x 2 accounts with PPI, I'm working with State Your Claim. After you've had the interview to determine how long it takes, how long are you likely to wait?

I'm with the same company but am certainly not impressed with them, i've had to do all the chasing up with them. I initially sent by claim forms back to them around June and hadnt heard anything for 6 weeks. I phoned them to be told that my forms hadn't been sent off and were 'stuck' in the system. I was then told they would be sent of immediately. Another month passed and i thought I should check to see if they had been sent off. Needless to say they hadn't , I was told I hadn't signed all the original forms (which I had), so signed further copies again. Anyway about a month after this I heard from Barclays bank last week, to say they had upheld my one claim and sent me a cheque for £1250, which I have cashed. Today I had an email from the claims company which said as soon as they hear anything about a successful claim they will let me know, so I replied to them saying I have already heard from Barclays, they then asked me to send a copy of the letter from Barclays even tho Barclays sent them a copy of the PPI result, so I am getting fed up the claims company

-taff

dazla wrote: »

I'm with the same company but am certainly not impressed with them, i've had to do all the chasing up with them.

This is why all of us will tell anyone never to use one.

You do the work, they get the money.

Jamesred

I wanted to share this with everyone who has thought about complaining.

At the beginning of September, i was clearing out old paperwork and found a hand written loan application form that the bank filled in for me. This had loanguard insurance added, 89.00 per month was the fee!

The next bit of paper work was a letter dated september 2009 which was a reply to my letter asking them to cancel the loan guard.

I then started thinking.....

We got married 18 years ago, and we took out a loan to pay for the wedding. Since then we have been repaying and refinancing the same loan. We had 4 credit cards with.

Natwest No PPI
RBS
capital one
halifax No PPI

I took out yet another loan with M & S to buy a car, then we refinanced that to get another car.

I decided to send a letter to each of these companies where we were paying the insurance, just to see what would happen., not really holding out much hope to be honest with you. DO THIS YOURSELF AS THE PPI RECLAIM COMPANIES ARE PANTS!!!

I got contacted by RBS and By Marks and Spencer's to ask further questions, the last call was just last Monday!

i had letter back from Capital One and from RBS, the credit card ones, both letters said they didnt agree with my complaint etc, sending me the copy of the application form that i filled in.

ok, fine, i will let those go as they wont be much money anyways.

On 1st November (our wedding Anniversary :-)) i received a letter from M & S saying that they were upholding my complaint and offered me £4858.88 which was based on the mis selling on 2 loans.

My god, what a shock to see that, really really good news.

TODAY!!!

I received a letter from ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND sorry 3 letters, here is what i got

Letter 1 - £3354.27 , wow really good again!
letter 2 - £4191.39, my heart starts getting faster!!
Letter 3 - £5577.02 now i am really trembling!!!

In total just shy of £18000!!!!

They asked me how i felt about my complaint, and i said the worst thing was not knowing how much extra i was paying for something i would never have needed.

I have never been unemployed and have always had work based sickness plans.

My point is - if you don't try to claim then you will receive nothing at all. It probably took me a couple of hours worth of researching who to send to etc. use this website and get your fingers out. For the cost of a couple of stamps??? Get on to it!!

Now i just need to wait for the money!!!! I think i may even take the wife on a honeymoon that we never actually had!!!!:D

Jamesred

:(Pants.. Just realised i posted in the wrong place

makomachina

CMC complaints are actually more likely to lead to a rejection and that's from first hand experience as a complaints handler.

"Yeah, but you've got an invested interest in making sure people don't get their money back!" I hear you say.

I can see why you might think that, but I work for an underwriter, which means we're covered by an indemnity agreement between ourselves and the seller, and the majority of what we pay out is recouped from them via some financial wizardry called profit share. There is no incentive for us to reject complaints that have merit, whether they're brought by a CMC or a consumer.

Now, onto my justification for my opening statement. The majority of high street CMCs use template letters, listing anything from six to twenty reasons as to why their client was missold. These reasons are often contradicatory and brought without the knowledge, or perhaps through the ignorance, of the client. In other cases, the CMC will ask the client leading questions and bait them into a response which fits vaguely into as many tickboxes as possible.

Now, I'm sure many would think "Well, if the CMC wants to pin my lender down on multiple fronts, that must be a good thing, right?" Wrong, wrong, wrong.

DISP 2.8.2 of the Dispute Resolution section of the FCA handbook means that allegations like being sold the policy unknowingly and the term of the policy not matching the loan (both of which are CMC staples) can easily be rejected by lenders and the entire complaint is rejected if just one item on that complaint falls foul of this rule.

The kicker is that a complaint rejected under DISP 2.8.2 cannot be considered for merits by the FOS, if the grounds for doing so are reasonable. Reasonable grounds could include being sent a letter in the post years ago that ought to have made you investigate your policy, had you truly not known you had it, or an expiry letter being sent, if you truly weren't aware of a term mismatch.

The sharper amongst you will probably ask "If you're really not biased towards paying out, why do you reject complaints under this rule? Surely a complaint should be upheld regardless of when the complaint has been made?"

We still have to assess complaints fairly and that means assessing them against the rules. Your complaint could have every substantial flaw going, but if it can be evidenced that your complaint should be been brought sooner, and it's now been made too late, then we're within our rights to tell you so. This is quite possibly the only thing a CMC tells you that you should take heed of, that there are certain time limits for certain circumstances.

If you've had your complaint handled by a CMC that's been rejected and the CMC is stalling on letting you have a copy of the final response letter, I'd personally put money on the odds that your complaint was timebarred (which is the term given to a complaint rejected under DISP 2.8.2) because they've ignored your own account of the policy sale and used a standard template.

Amusingly enough, these CMCs are still sending these exact same template letters and getting complaints disposed of incorrectly despite repeatedly getting their complaints binned by the FOS. This evidences a pure quantity over quality approach, aimed at raking in as much money for the CMC as possible with a minimal amount of effort.

"Churn 'em out, boys, the law of probabilities is with us on this one: some of these are bound to get cheques!"

If you were missold, your account of why you were missold is what needs to be taken into consideration. The CMC doesn't have any magical legal mumbo-jumbo that strengthens your case nor do they know anything you can't find out from a short telephone call to the Financial Ombudsman Service on your choice of a freephone number, a geographic number or a free callback. CMC's are explicitly banned from saying they're more likely to be successful for that exact reason.

And that time and effort they claim they're saving you? They're a middleman, a superfluous intemediary, an unnecessary third party. Want to fly to Paris from London? Don't get a connecting flight via New York.

Iloveprettythings

Hiya

I just wanted to share my claims so far:

HSBC - £8,901

Intelligent Finance - £700.45

M&S - £4,232

Natwest - £2,700.

I also have an ongoing one with Halifax.

Just to make people aware I did not use one of those agencies I did it direct. The M&S one I did not even have any paperwork or loan numbers or anything I just rang them and they looked up my name and address and could see which loans I had with them. I urge anyway just to make that call!

Just to mention also I have not had any rejections all my complaints have been upheld.

cloudyp12

Hi folks. I could do with some advice. My husband used a claim company some 3.5 years ago after a pushy phone call. We ended up using the company but as described here... we did ALL the chasing. There was another company involved with the claim (bluesky claims) and throughout the process we received communication from both companies stating that they weren't working with the other company as they were displaying bad practice but that my husband had an agreement with them and that they would sort things so not to worry! Hilariously, whilst this is happening, MBNA transferred money into our account as compensation and then followed up with a letter to acknowledge the case. The two claim companies were apparently still 'waiting to hear' at this point. Anyway, they eventually found out that we had been given compensation directly and sent us a bill. We explained that we hadn't agreed the figure but seeing as it took them 2 months to work out we had received it we were unlikely to be paying them for any service as they were clearly incompetent. A friend of ours is a lawyer and actually sent them a letter to confirm that we would not be making payment. We heard nothing else from them. 12 months ago we moved out of the house we were renting at the time and 3 months ago we brought our own home. We received a call from our old house today to collect an important letter that had been received. It is from the first claim company and it is both shocking but laughable. It reads-
'DESPITE NUMEROUS PEREVIOUS REQUESTS FOR PAYMENT OF OUR OUTSTANDING FEES YOU HAVE NOT SEEN FIT TO RESPOND. WE HAVE MADE ENQUIRIES AND NOTE THAT YOU OWN YOUR OWN PROPERTY IN WHICH THERE IS CONSIDERABLE EQUITY. THIS BEING THE CASE UNLESS YOU RESPOND WITHIN 7 DAYS WITH FULL PAYMENT OR REASONABLE PROPOSALS FOR SETTLING OUR OUTSTANDING FEES IT IS OUR INTENTION TO ISSUE PROCEEDINGS FOR THE FULL AMOUNT DUE TOGETHER WITH INTEREST AT 8% FROM THE DATE WHEN OUR RETAINER WAS TERMINATED WITH THE INTENTION OF APPLYING THEREAFTER FOR A CHARGING ORDER ON YOUR PROPERTY SHOULD THE JUDGEMENT REMAIN UNPAID. ONCE CHARGING ORDER HAS BEEN OBTAINED IT MAY BECOME NECESSARY FOR US TO APPLY TO SELL YOUR PROPERTY TO ENSURE THAT OUTSTANDING FEES ARE PAID IN FULL TOGETHER WITH ASSOCIATED INTEREST AND COURT FEES. tO AVOID THE ABOVE ACTION WE REQUEST THAT YOU CONTACT US AS A MATTER OF URGENCY WITH FULL PAYMENT OF OUR FEES OR REASONABLE PROPOSALS FOR SETTLING THE SAME AND IN ANY EVENT WITHIN 7 DAYS FROM THE DATE OF THIS LETTER.

The letter is dated 5th December and was sent to our old address. It does not state any amount or reference the claim amount. They have not made contact for 3.5 years. Yes, we moved house 12months ago but our telephone numbers have stayed the same and they have not made any attempt to make contact. If anyone could offer any advice, that would be really appreciated.

[Deleted User]

cloudyp12 wrote: »

If anyone could offer any advice, that would be really appreciated.

Get your lawyer friend to sort it out; he's the one who wrote to them saying you wouldn't be honouring the legal contract you had with them….

Hector218

I have an interesting case at the moment, I received compensation from First plus with the aid of the Claims Guys. When I received the compensation I told the claims guys that my account was still not correct, they said they would look into not but I never heard anything from them after they had taken their commission. First Plus in fact had not reduced my monthly payments and over a 2 year period I was overpaying 240 pounds per month too much on my loan. I made over 20 calls try to get this sorted and in the end first plus amended my payments and returned my overpayments. The next thing is I received a telephone call from the Claim Guys demanding 30% + VAT of the 5200 pounds claiming this was still PPI, since then I have received telephone calls every other day since the beginning of November. I complained about this but they it is PPI and therefore you owe us. In fact if I do pay them I will actually be rewarding them for not doing anything, if fact it is in their interest to do nothing. Any ideas of a way forward??