Affordability complaint rejected, good will gesture offered

Always_Fishing

I've had my final response letter now rejecting the complaint from Abound, all as expected and rejecting the complaint. There is a line in there though that has bothered me,

"We previously offered a small gesture of goodwill to prevent you from incurring the fee associated with raising a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS)."

Am I reading that correctly in that they are insinuating I will incur the cost if the claim is unsuccessful with the FOS? If so I would like to reference this in my complaint as another attempt to bully me through scare tactics into not raising a complaint with the FOS. I have several examples through the email chain which I will send of evidence of this sort of behaviour.

Thanks 

Grumpelstiltskin

Oh dear, they pay the fee not you, they are trying it on.

Always_Fishing

Grumpelstiltskin said:

Oh dear, they pay the fee not you, they are trying it on.

I thought as much, I've referenced this in my complaint to the FOS and sent the email chain with the other scare tactics and attempts to bully me into not escalating it further along with the other docs. 

TheComplaintGuy

You’ve read it correctly – the wording is misleading, but you won’t ever be charged a fee to take something to the FOS. The fee Abound are referring to is the case fee they have to pay when the Ombudsman picks the complaint up. It doesn’t matter whether you “win” or “lose” the outcome – the fee never falls on you.

Firms sometimes phrase this sort of thing in a way that makes people think there’s a risk in escalating, but there isn’t. If anything, the fact they’re flagging it is a sign they’d rather avoid the Ombudsman having a look.

If you’ve got examples where they’ve tried to nudge you away from escalation, include them. The FOS tends to take notice when a company’s language could discourage someone from using the complaints process properly.

Always_Fishing

TheComplaintGuy said:

You’ve read it correctly – the wording is misleading, but you won’t ever be charged a fee to take something to the FOS. The fee Abound are referring to is the case fee they have to pay when the Ombudsman picks the complaint up. It doesn’t matter whether you “win” or “lose” the outcome – the fee never falls on you.

Firms sometimes phrase this sort of thing in a way that makes people think there’s a risk in escalating, but there isn’t. If anything, the fact they’re flagging it is a sign they’d rather avoid the Ombudsman having a look.

If you’ve got examples where they’ve tried to nudge you away from escalation, include them. The FOS tends to take notice when a company’s language could discourage someone from using the complaints process properly.

Hi, 

I've forwarded the whole email chain on to the FOS as there is several examples of them trying to push me into accepting the good will as anything else is hopeless basically. I've made references to this in my complaint to the FOS as well as highlighting the line around me incurring fees as an attempt to bully and scare into accepting there offer. 

Hopefully it goes in my favour, they've been terrible to deal with compared to the other responses I've had back. 

Rob5342

They pay the fee not you, the fact they are being so dishonest and are trying so hard to dissuade you from escalating it suggests to me that they know there is a good chance of them losing. 

I had something similar with Uncle Buck a number of years ago. They rejected the claim saying it was frivolous and vexatious and were suggesting that I might be investigated for fraud if I'd said anything that wasn't 100% true in my application. I would have just let it lie at their rejection but because of the nature of their response I escalated it simply so they would have to pay the FOS fee.

Always_Fishing

Rob5342 said:

They pay the fee not you, the fact they are being so dishonest and are trying so hard to dissuade you from escalating it suggests to me that they know there is a good chance of them losing. 

I had something similar with Uncle Buck a number of years ago. They rejected the claim saying it was frivolous and vexatious and were suggesting that I might be investigated for fraud if I'd said anything that wasn't 100% true in my application. I would have just let it lie as be their rejection but because of the nature of their response I escalated it simply so they would have to pay the FOS fee.

I was almost prepared to give up on this one, I would have complained to the FOS anyway, but initially I thought made a convincing argument. Since though it's as if they're snatching defeat from the jaws of victory with how they've behaved and the contradicting statements.

We'll see but fingers crossed!

Rob5342

It's always worth escalating no matter how it looks as you have nothing to lose apart from a few minutes of your time but some chance you might gain from it.