making more than one complaint to the FOS

vshopper

Could someone tell me please if you can make more than one complaint to the FOS about the same company?

I had a long running complaint with Aviva about matching items cover on my insurance claim. Two years after the initial claim was put in I was still only at the stage of the case being prepared for an adjudicator. As work on carrying out the repair work had stopped as a result of the claim, I had limited bathroom facilities and it was making life very difficult. I therefore agreed to settle the complaint so that repair work could move forward. Now, a further 3 months down the line I have encountered further problems with them - relating this time to them insisting at the last minute that I had to accept a cash settlement rather than have their contractor carry out the agreed schedule of works. I have complained to them about forcing this course of action on me and asked them to fully investigate in line with their complaints procedure and if necessary provide me with their final response so that I can take the matter further with the FOS. They have replied with what I imagine is supposed to be their final response but have said that "as the matter has already been the subject of a FOS review they are unable to give me further FOS rights." Is this right? I want to complain about something that they have done after I settled the first complaint that I had.

InsideInsurance

You can have as many open cases as you want against any provider. The FOS will decide if each one is genuine and if they are pursue them.

I had/ have a complaint with a bank at the moment and with that a new angle has come to light and the FOS insisted that it must be dealt with as second case with them. First case is that they did do 3 things, the bank since escalating it has promised to rectify 2 of those three and despite doing 1 they have failed to do the second. The FOS say this is a new complaint and so I now have one file for the last remaining part of complaint one and a second file to deal with the failure to do what they promised to rectify the part they offered settlement on outside of the FOS but failed to action.

vshopper

They all just tie you up in knots and make things so difficult for you that you just feel like giving in and letting them win.

I feel like I've been to hell and back with all the lies/delays/having correspondence ignored/questions not being answered.

FlameCloud

Had the insurers appointed contractors to work on the property before the dispute arouse?

vshopper

Contractors had been in place for some time to do the work but work didn't actually start as the complaint about the extent of tiling covered under the policy was ongoing and Aviva would not enter into any correspondence with me (even about other unrelated issues) until I settled the complaint. Once I settled the complaint, Asprea, their claims management service contacted me to make arrangements to do the work. They were actually very helpful and accomodating and we talked about different options on the schedule of works. I wanted to skim the lounge rather than wallpaper it again and a number of other differences and we talked through them looking at ways of doing it. We agreed a schedule of works that was actually quite different to what was in place initially. I agreed to strip the wallpaper of the walls so that it would offset the increased cost of skimming and painting rather than wallpapering so things were held in abeyance for a while whilst we arrange to do this. During this time it occurred to me that now would be a good time to have an outside light put in (something I'd wanted for a while but would mean taking a feed from the light switch in the lounge and disturbing internal decoration). It made sense to do it now before the walls got skimmed rather than wait and do it later so I had the light fixed in and rang Asprea to ask them if they could amend the schedule of works to take account of the fact that it would need a little extra plaster to fill in the channelling and could they let me know how much extra i'd need to pay. I knew it wouldn't be much - £20 if that , but I didn't want to be accused of trying to pull a fast one and have them pay for more plaster than they had to. They said they couldn't do this as it was outside the scope of works and I'd have to get it done myself. I thought it seemed a bit obstructive, but I agreed and we left it that I'd get in touch when it was done so that they could start work.

I arranged for the walls to be done and as they were newly skimmed and I'd paid out for it to be done, I contacted Asprea and asked them if it would be possible to off set the money they'd saved in not having to plaster two of the walls in the lounge against painting the rest of the wall in the hall. As part of the claim they were due to carry out repair work and decorating to one of the walls in the hall but as only the top part of the wall was damaged they had said they would only decorate down to picture rail level. I'd always had a concern in my mind that the paint colour wouldn't match and that it would look odd with the top part of the wall newly painted and the bottom part not. I thought it was a reasonable request to make, particularly since we'd messed about with the schedule of works several times already, however Asprea replied that they'd have to refer to the insurance company on how to proceed. A week later I received a two line email saying that they'd heard from the insurance company and that as I had carried out private works there was no option but to issue a cash settlement for the claim. (A figure that had been calculated over a year ago when they'd tried to get me to cash settle and one that I knew didn't include some of the things that it should). I contacted them 4 times over the next three weeks and was ignored each time. I asked the FSO adjudicator I'd been dealing with for help. She kindly contacted them and said that they had said they would arrange for someone to contact me. Two weeks further down the line I still hadn't heard from them- this was now over two years since the claim was made and 18 months since the bathroom had been part stripped out and had limited facilities in there. I just couldn't wait any longer and reluctantly arranged to have the work done myself.

I have submitted an invoice to claim back the VAT but they are reusing to pay it. They also refuse to give a proper explanation for forcing the cash settlement on me - saying only that it was no longer possible to carry out the schedule of works as it had been agreed. I've pointed out til I'm blue in the face that it could have gone ahead exactly as planned if that's what they had wanted. They could either just not skim the 2 walls - thereby doing less work, or if they wanted to be bloody minded -skim them both again. I want to complain further about the non payment of the VAT and the fact that they enforced cash settlement but they say that because the FOS have reviewed this matter, they can't offer me further FOS rights. The FOS haven't reviewed either of these two points though as they happened after I settled the first complaint and it just doesn't seem right that I shouldn't be allowed an independent adjudication on this.