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

Bridlington1

Ed-1 said:

You're not going to believe the investigator's response to my counter arguments.

They're now pointing out the current offer webpage and saying that it is clear that as an account was held since 1st November 2022 you're not a new customer.

Because it is all the same scheme, apparently the terms announced yesterday now apply to switches done in February!

It doesn't surprise me at all given that my FOS case handler initially said that they had amended their definition of a "new customer" in November, but agreed that the definition was not made clear. 

As I said in another thread yesterday, Co-op seem to have classed both the November and January £125 offers as "enhancements" or relaunches of the previous £50 offer and have refused to pay up on this basis. Given that the new (May) £125 offer has the same name as the previous £125 and £50 offers it wouldn't surprise me if Co-op haven't tried to pull the same stunt again.

WillPS

I'm amazed FOS are entertaining such thin arguments from the Co-op Bank.

If I enter in to a contract with someone, I can't pop a piece of piece of paper in a filing cabinet which the other party hasn't even seen and then pull that piece of paper out to argue a definition when they take me to court/arbitration.

Really poor reflection of them as an organisation this, not that I suppose they care.

Dustybee

Ed-1 said:

You're not going to believe the investigator's response to my counter arguments.

They're now pointing out the current offer webpage and saying that it is clear that as an account was held since 1st November 2022 you're not a new customer.

Because it is all the same scheme, apparently the terms announced yesterday now apply to switches done in February!

Well, words fail me.  I thought I was unlucky with my inept investigator (and I pretty much expressed that opinion to them) but clearly there is more than one working there unfortunately.

dcs34

WillPS said:

I'm amazed FOS are entertaining such thin arguments from the Co-op Bank.

If I enter in to a contract with someone, I can't pop a piece of piece of paper in a filing cabinet which the other party hasn't even seen and then pull that piece of paper out to argue a definition when they take me to court/arbitration.

Really poor reflection of them as an organisation this, not that I suppose they care.

To continue the analogy, you also couldn't produce a piece of paper, months after signing the contract, with the same title as your contract, and claim its equivalent to the original contract.

Co-op may consider it one offer (or have conveniently taken that position in light of recent FOS issues...) but they shouldn't get away with retrospectively applying new T&Cs to previous agreements.

Ed-1

dcs34 said:

WillPS said:

I'm amazed FOS are entertaining such thin arguments from the Co-op Bank.

If I enter in to a contract with someone, I can't pop a piece of piece of paper in a filing cabinet which the other party hasn't even seen and then pull that piece of paper out to argue a definition when they take me to court/arbitration.

Really poor reflection of them as an organisation this, not that I suppose they care.

To continue the analogy, you also couldn't produce a piece of paper, months after signing the contract, with the same title as your contract, and claim its equivalent to the original contract.

Co-op may consider it one offer (or have conveniently taken that position in light of recent FOS issues...) but they shouldn't get away with retrospectively applying new T&Cs to previous agreements.

What in the terms even gives them the right to amend the offer?

Usually in these terms there is a clause to the effect that the offer may be amended or withdrawn without notice. These terms just say the offer can be withdrawn.

Ed-1

They're now relying on the clause 3.8 by claiming it's abuse of the offer to switch a second account in even if the points about eligible new customer and the scheme being an ongoing one weren't clear.

I can't believe the FOS are supporting such wafer thin arguments. It's now going to Ombudsman review.

Dustybee

Ed-1 said:

They're now relying on the clause 3.8 by claiming it's abuse of the offer to switch a second account in even if the points about eligible new customer and the scheme being an ongoing one weren't clear.

I can't believe the FOS are supporting such wafer thin arguments. It's now going to Ombudsman review.

Your investigator seems to have followed what my investigator did in my claim (see page 6, my post on 26th April).  

Clause 3.8 was quoted back to me and 'profiteer from the offer' suddenly became 'profit from the offer'.  

ETA:

This clause actually has an example quoted to explain what it means and this seems to be ignored.

adamp87

I'm not sure if you'll receive a good response to be honest, they can I'd assume change the terms of their bonus stated that they could decline a bonus as they saw fit which presumably is what they have done here. Rightly or wrongly I think the ombudsman would probably say well that's enough.

Quite surprised they didn't just offer to meet you half way the you complained rather than take the is it £500 charge at the FCA but ..

Good luck with it, be interesting what happens. 

eskbanker

adamp87 said:

Quite surprised they didn't just offer to meet you half way the you complained rather than take the is it £500 charge at the FCA but ..

If you're referring to the FOS case fee, that's now £750, but it would be a slippery slope if financial institutions were seen to be settling claims simply to avoid that, so they'll generally defend what they consider defensible, even if it could appear to be more expensive (in the short term) to let it go to FOS.

TheBanker

eskbanker said:

adamp87 said:

Quite surprised they didn't just offer to meet you half way the you complained rather than take the is it £500 charge at the FCA but ..

If you're referring to the FOS case fee, that's now £750, but it would be a slippery slope if financial institutions were seen to be settling claims simply to avoid that, so they'll generally defend what they consider defensible, even if it could appear to be more expensive (in the short term) to let it go to FOS.

This is correct - in all the time I dealt with FOS complaints, the impact of the fee was not a consideration in whether to allow a complaint to go to FOS. If we (the bank) felt the complaint had been correctly dealt with internally, we would allow it to go to FOS irrespective of the amount involved. There was also a Treating Customers Fairly issue - if we gave someone money because they'd threatened to go to FOS, we should apply the same redress to other customers who'd made the same complaint but had accepted our decision and not taken the matter to FOS. Otherwise it would be unfair to the customers who had (rightly, in our view) accepted our decision as correct. This might be much more expensive than having a case decided by FOS.

If we'd settled cases to avoid the FOS fees, that would have basically led to us refunding everyone whose claim was less than £500 (case fee at the time) - which would not have been viable.