Do you trust Financial Ombudsman?

eskbanker

OceanSound wrote: »

The unusually high number of complaints is not a flaw in an argument. Actually, it's a strategy used to attack the personality (of a person making an argument) not the argument per se.

The flaw is that you're making assertions about FOS as if you were a typical 'customer' of theirs, whereas the stats illustrate that you're far from the norm - I'm not attacking you personally, I'm just playing back your own numbers to highlight how unusual your behaviour is, and this inevitably colours your perceptions and casts doubt on the credibility of your accusations.

OceanSound wrote: »

... the average is somewhat less than 0.01 complaints per year per UK adult, so a sustained period of exceeding this by two orders of magnitude is clearly unusual.

You are quoting a number here, without any evidence or a source.

I'm referring to verifiable public domain data - the mid-2017 UK population was 66m, of which 15.5m were 19 or under: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/ukadultpopulation

The volume of complaints received by FOS is shown on page 7 of their annual review at http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/directors-report-2018.pdf:

2014/15 329,509
2015/16 340,899
2016/17 321,283
2017/18 339.967

Therefore I stand by my comment that "10 complaints in 8 years is disproportionately high (in the context of total annual volumes running at 320-340K, from circa 50m UK adults)".

OceanSound wrote: »

What demographic are we talking about here?, is your figure based on a representative sample of the UK?. Do certain demographics make more complaints than others?...think about these before just quoting a barebone figure that apply on 'average'.

You're clutching at straws here - no doubt the figures will vary by geography, age, etc, but that's of no relevance to the point being made.

OceanSound wrote: »

'muck-raking documentary' is your opinion. Others may feel it's a good current affairs programme that does wonders for investigative journalism. Anyway,I think you are falling in to the same trap here of criticizing the messenger and NOT properly grappling with the argument.

Not really - it's not my opinion that it was a documentary (unless you're conceding that it wasn't factual?), and the nature of such programmes is that they have to sensationalise. As per my earlier post, I'm not disputing that they found evidence of lack of training and similar weaknesses, but as dunstonh pointed out, they failed to make any clear case that FOS failings resulted in any distortions in their findings.

JuicyJesus

deadendwaterfall wrote: »

Don't the FOS have the right to contact anyone who has received the money already demanding they pay it back or else?

They wouldn't consider it fair to do so when customers had apparently received compensation from their bank in good faith after going through an independent process. It wasn't through any fault of anything the complainers had done - and ultimately the bank had the right to take things to an ombudsman's final decision if they felt strongly enough that the adjudicator had got it badly wrong (as does the complainant).

Also, it wasn't FOS' money paid out, it was the bank's.

Nasqueron

The day the FOS allows firms to demand costs from complainers putting in fraudulent complaints (around 1/2 the PPI complaints in the system are now from people who didn't have PPI) I'll see it as company biased.

The % of upholds doesn't necessarily mean the FOS is working in favour of companies, it can simply reflect the fact that, particularly since 2005, the sales process is much better and people are taking out products with the proper sales process and are simply chancing their arm with a complaint pushed on by claims companies.

Cotta

An interesting acidic test will be how FOS handles the TSB cases that are currently pending.

veryintrigued

It's very dependent on who gets allocated the complaint in my experience.

Some of the employees are fantastic. Others aren't - they really, really aren't.

steampowered

Personally, I don't have a great deal of confidence in the quality of FOS decisions.

I don't think the FOS has a particular bias either way, but they do seem to come up with some strange decisions and don't always properly investigate.

I suspect the FOS struggles due to a limited budget. The FOS is probably a good route for run-of-the-mill issues, like issues over PPI, but less so for more unusual issues.

The other key issue is that complaining to the FOS is quite a long process given the need to complain to the bank first and the length of time that takes.

I usually suggest that people go straight to small claims track in the county courts rather than complaining to the FOS. The county court is a much quicker process and the quality of decision making is mostly pretty good. You also get the benefit of getting a proper hearing in-person. Court isn't appropriate in cases seeking compensation for poor customer service though.

JuicyJesus

steampowered wrote: »

I usually suggest that people go straight to small claims track in the county courts rather than complaining to the FOS. The county court is a much quicker process and the quality of decision making is mostly pretty good. You also get the benefit of getting a proper hearing in-person. Court isn't appropriate in cases seeking compensation for poor customer service though.

The problem there being that small claims court costs money, works on the basis of strict law rather than what is fair in all the circumstances as FOS does and potentially leaves you on the hook for further costs while FOS is always free of charge to the consumer.

Court has its place but in the vast majority of cases there’s no good reason not to exhaust the free and consumer-friendly complaints procedure first before you think about spending money. Even once you get to a final ombudsman’s decision, you can simply reject it and then go to court unimpeded.

Anthorn

Personally, I have never had to complain the the FOS but its very existence works. The conversation goes something like this:

Is that your final decision?
Yes it is.
Oh ok then, I'll go to the next stage in the complaints procedure which is the FOS.
Ah, hold on we'll take another look at it.
Ok we have considered your case on its individual merits and we can find in your favour and we'll pay you 50 quid for the inconvenience.
Ok thank you.

The same is also true of energy companies and OFGEM.

pmduk

paragon909 wrote: »

Well, It got locked away in that account before the unexpected change happened which meant i needed it, You're welcome.

If you haven't a financial cushion to survive an unexpected change, that obviously wasn't the right product for you.

pmduk

dunstonh wrote: »

Really? You ask anyone who has seen these programmes cover their profession and they will tell you of the programme errors, bad assumptions, editing to tell a story etc.

I've seen Watchdog cover a medical insurance case I was familiar with, (a colleague had handled it), and it was the most biased piece of TV I've ever seen, Ann Robinson's diatribe lasted 2-3 minutes, as soon as our rep opened his mouth he was cut off with a "We've no more time". We never put forward a spokesman for live Watchdog again,