Financial Ombudsman not upheld complaint

Genie10

I have heard back from the Financial Ombudsman & they have not up held my complaint against Zopa loans. 

In his reasoning the FO claims my debts totalled £28k at the time of the loan being taken. 

In actual fact my debts totalled £42k. 

I learned during an argument with a different loan company that my three Updraft loans totalling £14k do not show on the credit agency they use. I am presuming this is the case with the FO & Zopa. 

The Updraft loans show on Credit Karma but not on Experian or Equifax. 

Do you think it’s worth me appealing this? Should I expect them to have checked other agencies or is this the norm?

Many thanks 😊

 

MattMattMattUK

Genie10 said:

I have heard back from the Financial Ombudsman & they have not up held my complaint against Zopa loans. 

In his reasoning the FO claims my debts totalled £28k at the time of the loan being taken. 

In actual fact my debts totalled £42k. 

I learned during an argument with a different loan company that my three Updraft loans totalling £14k do not show on the credit agency they use. I am presuming this is the case with the FO & Zopa. 

The Updraft loans show on Credit Karma but not on Experian or Equifax. 

Do you think it’s worth me appealing this? Should I expect them to have checked other agencies or is this the norm?

Many thanks 😊

It is worth you appealing because you have nothing to loose by doing so, that being said I do not think it will make a difference and I believe them to be correct in their judgement. There is no obligation for lenders to use multiple CRAs, or even guidance that it might be good practice. 

Rob5342

I agree, if you escalate it to an ombudsman then they will probably say the same thing, but you might as well try as all you have to lose is 10 minutes of your time writing a few emails.

I had a complaint against Nationwide about a credit limit increase which they rejected and I sent it to the FOS. The investigator found in my favour and said they should refund interest on the balance over the previous limit and I escalated it to an ombudsman saying they should refund interest on the whole amount. The ombudsman agreed with the investigator and issued a preliminary decision saying that, but then Nationwide offered to refund the interest on the whole amount. I don't know what their thinking was but they had spent two years arguing against it, only to voluntarily offer to pay £15,000 when they could have just accepted the ombudsman decision and would only have had to pay £5000. All I can think is that they wanted to stop the ombudsman decision being published. I think that was an exceptional case, but keep fighting as you can sometimes win when it looks very unlikely. 

Genie10

Also the FO has worked out my DTI to be 74%.  If the £14k updraft loan had been included it will of course be considerably higher. It is surprising that such a high risk score doesn’t warrant cross referencing CRA’s 🫤

MattMattMattUK

Genie10 said:

Also the FO has worked out my DTI to be 74%.  If the £14k updraft loan had been included it will of course be considerably higher. It is surprising that such a high risk score doesn’t warrant cross referencing CRA’s 🫤

They credit checked you, they got an answer from the UKs biggest CRA (Experian), nothing wrong with that. You also have to take some personal responsibility here, you chose to borrow more than you could afford.

Submit the appeal, see what happens, but do not be optimistic about the decision being changed.

sourcrates

Its always worth taking matters as far as possible, because the more stink you make, the better the chance the lender will just pay you something to make you go away, what they term a "gesture of goodwill" in other words hush money.

Keep going, I would.