Do you trust Financial Ombudsman?

peterbaker

Oh dear - I see once more we need to remind that the thread is about whether the Financial Ombudsman Service can be trusted.


Freedom of Information requests referenced at whatdotheyknow.com are a good place to research facts as released upon statutory request by FOS themselves

On that question of trust, there are good FOI questions answered that help MSE readers form a judgement about whether decisions made by FOS are correct (trustworthy). One such is this very recent one:
“I would be grateful if you could advise of the number of complaints you have received where the initial decision as arrived at by a case investigator has, on appeal, been overturned by an actual ombudsman. Please supply this information for the last twelve months.”

And in direct contrast, the response to this more barbed and therefore unsuccessful request is a beauty to behold :rotfl:

JuicyJesus

Wow so ombudsmen can and do overturn complaints as is the point of them being a final stage of the FOS process to ensure that consumers (and businesses!) have a further point of appeal if they feel an adjudicator has got it seriously wrong?

Sod FSMA; THIS changes everything.

To take a cue from eskbanker, "even if that is true, so what?" If the point is that sometimes adjudicators put out weird decisions, then that's rather obvious. That's why consumers (and businesses) have that further right of appeal. A right of appeal which is basically as transparent as is possible given every single ombudsman's decision is published, going back about five years now.

Also, FOS are well within their rights to refuse to deal with FOI requests that are obviously vexatious - as with every public body. As the person writing that "barbed" one has made no fewer than TWENTY FOI requests to FOS, including ones on such amazingly important subjects as "does someone have to sign their name with a pen to accept an adjudicator's view", and appears to be doing so for the sake of £16 and in a scattergun way, I can't say I blame them.

peterbaker

I said it was a beauty - seems someone liked it :rotfl:

Here's another - some employees at FOS just can't be trusted even with the basics it seems We do hope it's not a cultural habit picked up while they were there

JuicyJesus

Honestly, what the f**k does "how much debt has been left unpaid by people who have left the organisation year on year for the past three years" have to do with anything?

Once again: "even if that is true, so what?"

eskbanker

peterbaker wrote: »

On that question of trust, there are good FOI questions answered that help MSE readers form a judgement about whether decisions made by FOS are correct (trustworthy). One such is this very recent one:
“I would be grateful if you could advise of the number of complaints you have received where the initial decision as arrived at by a case investigator has, on appeal, been overturned by an actual ombudsman. Please supply this information for the last twelve months.”

JuicyJesus wrote: »

Wow so ombudsmen can and do overturn complaints as is the point of them being a final stage of the FOS process to ensure that consumers (and businesses!) have a further point of appeal if they feel an adjudicator has got it seriously wrong?

Sod FSMA; THIS changes everything.

To take a cue from eskbanker, "even if that is true, so what?" If the point is that sometimes adjudicators put out weird decisions, then that's rather obvious. That's why consumers (and businesses) have that further right of appeal. A right of appeal which is basically as transparent as is possible given every single ombudsman's decision is published, going back about five years now.

Unless I'm misinterpreting that FOI request about decisions being overturned, this happens in about 21% of the cases escalated to ombudsmen, or to put it another way, 79% aren't changed.

This does of course beg the question of what the blinkered conspiracy theorist would consider an appropriate overturn percentage to be in such circumstances - obviously a very low figure would be construed as the appeal process being a sham and a charade, cosily rubber-stamping decisions rather than reviewing them critically and objectively

A glance at the equivalent figures at the top end of the judiciary shows that appeals allowed versus dismissed break down approximately 50/50 - no doubt to some post-truthers that signifies incompetent judges and an untrustworthy/corrupt/flawed/etc system rather than genuine and legitimate differences of opinion and interpretation....

peterbaker

I don’t think there are any 19 year old adjudicators in the judiciary, especially in the higher courts, and the level of legal professionalism practised might be rather different to that on display at FOS, so the comparison doesn’t work too well for me

eskbanker

peterbaker wrote: »

I don’t think there are any 19 year old adjudicators in the judiciary, especially in the higher courts, and the level of legal professionalism practised might be rather different to that on display at FOS, so the comparison doesn’t work too well for me

If you're going to equate age with competence, what do you feel would be a realistic minimum age for an FOS adjudicator?

Perhaps you, or one of your ilk, would like to submit a frivolous FOI request asking for percentage of decisions overturned correlated by age of adjudicator? That's not a serious suggestion, by the way....

And back to my question, what percentage of decisions overturned on appeal would you believe to be appropriate, and on what basis?

masonic

JuicyJesus wrote: »

Look, I'm not reading all of that. Make your point in a more succinct way or sod off to be honest. I'm not reading through twelve paragraphs of green ink about how FOS are intergalactic space lizards when I managed to summarise most of your posts on this thread in four bullet points.

There's no point in you trying to read it or comprehend it. Your mind has been atrophied by the fluoride the Government has put in your drinking water and you've been further pacified by chemtrails. It was all way too much for me too, especially after another thread in which Peter revealed to me that the Government had engaged in a surreptitious campaign in collusion with the banks to shift responsibility for bank fraud onto the vulnerable elderly to cause some of them to literally die of shock.

Join me in the bliss of ignorance, where this thread is just delightful and free of circumlocutions - well, except when a certain person insists on quoting in full some of the posts I wouldn't otherwise see.

Cotta

For me this is a fascinating and timely subject as I have just had a case against TSB which is at the finishing stage of the Ombudsman's review, below were my issues:

1. Joined in April 2018 and transferred around £3k across to my account, with the IT issues I was frozen out of my account with no access until 29.08.18. TSB advised the Ombudsman that I had not registered for online banking and then had to back peddle to advise there was an issue with my account on their side which they fixed on 29.08.18. I had previously been unable to get this resolved as it was impossible to get through to them online/phone.

2. TSB failed to send out my PIN code for my debit card so I have not been able to access my funds during these four months.

3. I moved house in May, I was unable to change my address online due to technical issues, I sent two complaints through the TSB which remain unanswered (TSB initially denied they received these), yesterday the Ombudsman advised me to call their office but they could not update it on the phone and stated that there is an issue with this facility on their website at present.

4. Referral bonuses and 5% interest has not been paid despite meeting the criteria.

5. Complaint emails sent around April time has still been left unanswered.

The Ombudsman yesterday advised me it was difficult to put a financial figure on my issues but he would be looking at a "nominal amount of £50". I really feel this is quite low for everything that has went on.

JuicyJesus

Cotta wrote: »

For me this is a fascinating and timely subject as I have just had a case against TSB which is at the finishing stage of the Ombudsman's review, below were my issues:

1. Joined in April 2018 and transferred around £3k across to my account, with the IT issues I was frozen out of my account with no access until 29.08.18. TSB advised the Ombudsman that I had not registered for online banking and then had to back peddle to advise there was an issue with my account on their side which they fixed on 29.08.18. I had previously been unable to get this resolved as it was impossible to get through to them online/phone.

2. TSB failed to send out my PIN code for my debit card so I have not been able to access my funds during these four months.

3. I moved house in May, I was unable to change my address online due to technical issues, I sent two complaints through the TSB which remain unanswered (TSB initially denied they received these), yesterday the Ombudsman advised me to call their office but they could not update it on the phone and stated that there is an issue with this facility on their website at present.

4. Referral bonuses and 5% interest has not been paid despite meeting the criteria.

5. Complaint emails sent around April time has still been left unanswered.

The Ombudsman yesterday advised me it was difficult to put a financial figure on my issues but he would be looking at a "nominal amount of £50". I really feel this is quite low for everything that has went on.

I would agree with you that that's quite low in terms of monetary compensation going by what you're saying. I'm interested to know the reasoning they'll put behind it because I'm fairly sure they've instructed more compensation in similar cases. As and when you get the final decision, can you post the DRN and date of decision so we can take a look at the anonymised copy FOS post up?