Too late?

splewington

Hi,

I've started two endowment mis-selling claims against R&SA (now Pheonix). I received red alert letters from them in 2003 for one policy and 2005 for the other. Am I too late to claim on the 2003 policy, they claim in a recent phone call to them that I have 3 years from red letter day to make a claim?

Assuming they say I'm too late, is it worth pursuing via some other route (financial ombudsman) or will that prove fruitless?

Thanks in advance.

dunstonh

they claim in a recent phone call to them that I have 3 years from red letter day to make a claim?

That is correct.

Assuming they say I'm too late, is it worth pursuing via some other route (financial ombudsman) or will that prove fruitless?

The FOS is not an alternative route. It is a continuation of the defined complaints process if you disagree with the outcome. The FOS will only intervene if the time bar is incorrectly applied.

The only other option is court action but that rarely results in success. The small number of cases that have been won have often been won on a technicality or by using an indirect approach. With court action you have to prove a mis-sale and you need to present evidence of that.

splewington

OK, thanks seems crazy.

When I got the red letters I transferred more of the mortgage to repayment terms to so as to reduce the impact/ dependency on the policies. That was my way of dealing with the situation but the process says that I have 3 years to sell after being notified? I wanted to give the things a chance to recover but still took action to when told of the situation. Should I be raising this with them?

dunstonh

Should I be raising this with them?

Wouldnt make any difference. The FSA agreed the timebar. The idea behind it is that if you were genuinely mis-sold you would have complained the minute you found out there was a high risk of shortfall. The time bar is a way of removing opportunistic complainers and those that accepted the risk but want to hedge their bets to see if it recovers or not (which some have).