Caught my bank lying. How can I negotiate a higher compensation?

vikkiew

I raised a complaint with a bank after noticing something in their system not working correctly. I did not suffer direct financial loss but the situation did cost me £100 indirectly and 2 months of correspondence and waiting during the complaint. The issue has likely caused problems for other customers without them realising.

In the beginning the bank denied there was any problem and blamed me for not having done something correctly. Meanwhile they corrected the problem I had found. When I confronted them they tried to continue the lie before admitting there had been an issue and they had fixed it. The complaints team blamed an individual employee for the lie.

They have apologised and offered me £500 as goodwill. Considering they deliberately lied and blamed me rather than admitting their mistake I don't want to accept this. How do I ask for more? Can I get more if I threaten to involve the Financial Ombudsman or promise not to involve them?

No I will not name the bank. They are a high street bank you have heard of.

elsien

 You’re already getting £500 instead of the hundred you mention, although I am confused as to how you can lose £100 while still not having a direct financial loss. 

Take it and move on. 

eskbanker

vikkiew said:

They have apologised and offered me £500 as goodwill. Considering they deliberately lied and blamed me rather than admitting their mistake I don't want to accept this. How do I ask for more? Can I get more if I threaten to involve the Financial Ombudsman or promise not to involve them?

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/expect/compensation outlines the FOS approach to awarding compensation, so the bank's offer is already fairly well up the scale - in the absence of any meaningful detail it's impossible to say how likely it is that FOS would go any higher than you already are.

It costs financial institutions a case fee of £650 when a valid complaint is assessed by FOS, and so some complainants have adopted the low-level extortion approach of threatening businesses with escalating a complaint on the basis that it would cost them more to go to FOS, but obviously if institutions set a precedent of rolling over every time someone threatened that, they'd lose money hand over fist, so it's unlikely to be particularly fruitful IMHO....  Likewise, I don't think that promising not to go to FOS is really viable, although obviously the whole point of FOS is that it's intended to resolve matters that couldn't be agreed between the two parties, so any such agreement is inherently intended to avoid the need to escalate!

COIAHLGW

Greed comes to mind.  Take the money before they rescind the offer.  Submit a SAR request to your bank if you wish.  However as the nature of the complaint was not disclosed, £500 seems more than generous based on the information previously provided here.

artyboy

Oh lordy, how about accepting that £500 is a ridiculously good result here and just move on. Flippin' compo culture at its worst...

Or perhaps you'd like to explain the nature of the 'issue' in more detail? I'm not holding my breath.

Section62

vikkiew said:

I raised a complaint with a bank after noticing something in their system not working correctly. I did not suffer direct financial loss but the situation did cost me £100 indirectly and 2 months of correspondence and waiting during the complaint. The issue has likely caused problems for other customers without them realising.

In the beginning the bank denied there was any problem and blamed me for not having done something correctly. Meanwhile they corrected the problem I had found. When I confronted them they tried to continue the lie before admitting there had been an issue and they had fixed it. The complaints team blamed an individual employee for the lie.

They have apologised and offered me £500 as goodwill. Considering they deliberately lied and blamed me rather than admitting their mistake I don't want to accept this. How do I ask for more? Can I get more if I threaten to involve the Financial Ombudsman or promise not to involve them?

No I will not name the bank. They are a high street bank you have heard of.

If you go to FOS there's a risk the investigator and/or ombudsman will lack the ability to comprehend the problem and instead declare that the bank has done nothing wrong, even though they have already admitted their error.

In which case you could end up with nothing.

Take the money.  And possibly consider making a submission to the FCA if you believe the issue is something worth bringing to their attention.

Idpullthecurtain

If youve lost out on £100 and they are offering you £500, that is a great result IMO.  Not sure why you wouldnt be happy accepting that.

flaneurs_lobster

vikkiew said:

 Can I get more if I threaten to involve the Financial Ombudsman or promise not to involve them?

Threaten them? You think that trying to blackmail a "high street bank" is a good idea? After they've offered you £500 to go away?

On you go.

sheramber

How much do you want?

TheElectricCow

So based on the details we have, an employee or employees of nondescript high street bank have either made a poorly informed mistake or, as you suggest, have attempted to intentionally mislead you around a technical error.

This error has cost you £100, but the bank has corrected it, apologised for this, and has offered you 5 times the amount you've lost. 

How much do you believe your case is worth and what exactly do you want to get out of it? From the limited information we have, the offer on the table sounds incredibly generous. If you feel the amount they've offered doesn't reflect the true value of whatever it is you've experienced, can you demonstrate any of your reasoning or rationale why that is the case (other than simply looking to squeeze more out of them)?

boingy

I'd take the £500 before they realised that they meant to type £50.