Financial Ombudsmans Service

spikiemikie

What are peoples experiences of the FOS, for non-PPI issues?


Do they fight the consumers corner, or are they submissive in their approach to big financial companies when it comes to taking them to task ?

Alice_Walker

The FOS tend to be very generous in their treatment of consumers. Where there are discrepancies in a complaint, or where the customer's evidence is vague or weak, they'll give them a large benefit of the doubt.

You can search complaint outcomes on their website.

Cliecost

Although they say they are impartial they do look at whether you were treated fairly in the complaints process and in what lead to you making a complaint. Something the courts don't do.

dacouch

To add to the above two excellent posts, the FOS works on the basis that the general public are not financially literate so tend to err on the consumers side.

They also look at what's fair even if the financial services providers contract is water tight against you.

Unfortunately they tend to move at a similar speed to continental drift

spikiemikie

See, I had suspected they would be helpful. HOWEVER..


I thought I had a good case against a credit card company... However, the FOS only upheld part of the complaint. Convinced something was amiss, I submitted an Subject Access Request.


It transpires the Ombudsman drafted a Final Decision wholly agreeing with my case, sent the draft to the credit card company who said 'we would not look to refund him' and with that, and no other submissions by either side, the Ombudsman wrote the Final Decision which was in total contrast to her draft... So either she didn't agree with my case from the outset or, she didn't feel that she could assert her original decision... in either case, it begs the question why draft a wholly different response.

Malthusian

Can you give us the case reference so we can look at the decision? (It's a number beginning with DRS.) All Ombudsman decisions are published on ombudsman-decisions.org.uk - with your personally identifying information removed.