Co-operative bank refusing to pay £125 refer-a-friend offer FOS case

Dustybee

Further to my post the other day detailing my FOS investigator's refusal.  I have submitted my request to have the Ombudsman review my complaint and also included further points posted here (thanks to all) about the internal evidence from the Co-operative Bank being used and the great info from @Section62 regarding the FCA Handbook.  I took the investigator's "Key Points" on the decision in detail and disagreed, with evidence to prove, that each one was incorrect.  Specifically, that the February 2023 Refer-a-Friend was a new bonus not a continuation as the previous bonus had ended.  That condition 3.6 regarding the 'only one payment...' etc was unclear and ambiguous and didn't meet the FCA Handbook guidelines. In total I submitted another two pages of text to support my view.

I've now had a response in which the investigator has now included more (rubbish) reasons of why they found in favour of the Co-operative Bank :

I note that you feel The Co-operative Bank Plc should have made it clearer that the refer a friend scheme was an ongoing one. The Co-operative has stated that the terms of the scheme show that the scheme is for new customers who have not been referred before or who are not returning customers. The Co-operative have also quoted section 3.8 of the terms and conditions which allows them to withhold payment if they have reasonable grounds to suspect the applicant is seeking to profit from the offer. Taken together, and in light of the particular circumstances of this case, I think the Co-operative have applied the terms and conditions fairly and reasonably.

Firstly, I wasn't expecting any further discussion on the matter, just confirmation of the claim now going to the Ombudsman.  Secondly, the above paragraph shows the investigator isn't reading my claim details and is now quoting other conditions never mentioned before.  

Is this normal procedure for the investigator? I feel like I'm arguing with the investigator now not Co-Operative Bank!

Should I respond to these latest reasons so that the Ombudsman can review my side?

 

WillPS

"The Co-operative have also quoted section 3.8 of the terms and conditions which allows them to withhold payment if they have reasonable grounds to suspect the applicant is seeking to profit from the offer"

Point 3.8 says no such thing. Seeking to profit and profiteering are 2 very different things.

If they were able to exclude everybody who made a profit they would be excluding literally everybody.

ForumUser7

WillPS said:

"The Co-operative have also quoted section 3.8 of the terms and conditions which allows them to withhold payment if they have reasonable grounds to suspect the applicant is seeking to profit from the offer"

Point 3.8 says no such thing. Seeking to profit and profiteering are 2 very different things.

If they were able to exclude everybody who made a profit they would be excluding literally everybody.

My thoughts exactly - @dustybee re-iterate your request for an ombudsman to look at it, and if the investigator appears not to escalate it again, probably the best thing to do is call up the helpline (not the investigators direct number), and explain, and say they seem to be trying to avoid escalating it - hopefully someone can help you out. N.B. the call handler will likely not comment on any aspect of your case (as they haven't looked into it), but they should be able to get someone to sort the escalation

Alex9384

Omg, are these "investigators" some temp workers or trainees?

They really seem to not understand what you're trying to explain. And not understanding the difference between profit and profiteering is ridiculous.

Anyway, what's the better proof of how ambiguous the Coop T&C are than different outcomes from different investigators for the same issue? Obviously anyone can interpret them whichever way they wish and still be right. Some people get paid, some don't. The only difference is which investigator handled the complaint.

Section62

Dustybee said:

Firstly, I wasn't expecting any further discussion on the matter, just confirmation of the claim now going to the Ombudsman.  Secondly, the above paragraph shows the investigator isn't reading my claim details and is now quoting other conditions never mentioned before.  

Is this normal procedure for the investigator? I feel like I'm arguing with the investigator now not Co-Operative Bank!

Should I respond to these latest reasons so that the Ombudsman can review my side?

Yes, on the basis of a complaint I've been involved in, the quality of service has declined significantly over the last 5 years or so, and the role of the investigator is apparently not to understand the complaint, but rather to argue that their (mis)understanding of the facts is the correct version.

Although some of the text on the FOS website suggests complaints go direct to ombudsman review if you don't agree with the investigator, the reality is the investigators have significant leeway to continue to 'investigate' in response to further comments.  It can take a fair bit of effort to get the case passed to an ombudsman.

I'd like to say having the complaint reviewed by an ombudsman is a positive step, but in light of the case above I'm not so sure.  The ombudsman has disagreed with the investigator - not by now upholding the complaint, but instead coming up with a different set of reasons why the bank were perfectly reasonable doing what they did.  Given this jutification involved the ombudsman inventing an account which doesn't exist, and ignoring the bank's own admission of service failure, I couldn't say there is much point to FOS existing if this is representative of their current level of service.

But give it a go, and see if you are lucky enough to get an ombudsman who wants to understand and put things right.

TheBanker

I used to deal with FOS complaints at the bank I used to work at.

This was a few years ago, but back then the quality of adjudicators was variable. Some were great, others needed very basic banking concepts explaining as part of the bank's evidence.

Normally when you got to an ombudsman they were sensible - I obviously did not always agree with their decisions but never saw any that were actually irrational.

I always wondered if the adjudicators had a performance target to resolve a certain percentage of cases - they always seemed very reluctant to pass cases to an ombudsman, even if both the bank and customer wanted a final decision. There are several cases where I remember the adjudicator dragging things out despite having completed a full investigation and it being obvious that the bank and customer were miles apart and never going to agree.

Ed-1

Investigator's view:

Dustybee

Ed-1 said:

Investigator's view:

At the very least, the investigator's seem to be keeping to the same reasoning for not upholding the claim.

Have you decided to accept the investigator's decision or take the claim through to an Ombudsman?

Ed-1

Dustybee said:

Ed-1 said:

Investigator's view:

At the very least, the investigator's seem to be keeping to the same reasoning for not upholding the claim.

Have you decided to accept the investigator's decision or take the claim through to an Ombudsman?

I'm not settling for this. It'll be going to an Ombudsman if necessary.

Alex9384

Ed-1 said:

Investigator's view:

Again the same junk reasoning.

1. Mixing up the terms offer and scheme. Same scheme is not the same offer. Individual offers are available within one scheme. Even when I received email from Coop, their excuse was that I have benefited from "this offer". Not a single word about scheme.

2. "I can see from the information provided by B". OK, can you see this information in their T&C, or was in only provided to you by Coop during the investigation? Consumers don't have access to such information and make their decisions based on T&C, not on internal info from the bank, which they can't see.

3. Again "existing customer" is not specified anywhere in their T&C, unless they can show it to me.
It's very reasonable to assume that when you close your account with a bank, you are no longer a customer. Again, customer is not aware of "having a profile on their system". For how long does this profile exist? Do Coop tell you that you'll have a profile on their system after closing the account?