We fight any claim

The difficulty with talking to a CMC on the telephone is that you cannot see their faces.

If you could, you would easily be able to tell if they were lying because it is all the while their lips move!

There are other ways of telling, though:

• They are more likely to be successful than you are.
  This is a lie because the FCA, FOS and MOJ (their regulator) all say it is no different. In fact the MOJ specifically bans them from suggesting they will be - but it is possible to find many examples of them doing otherwise. Some even have the barefaced cheek to put spam posts on this forum suggesting they can.
• They tell you that you are on a database of missold PPI.
  This is a lie because there is no such database.
• They have personal information about you showing you were had PPI
  This is you personal data and should not be in their possessionI
  So if they do not have this information then they are lying. If they do have it, then they are have stolen it - or somebody else has stolen it for them.
• You were sold PPI without knowing it.
  This is very unlikely.
  As you note, PPI on your credit card was cancelled almost immediately - it is easy to spot because it appears on your credit card statement each month.
  Mortgage PPI almost always involves a separate monthly payment to an insurance company. Mortgage lenders do not put the cost of the policy on as an up front charge because it reduces the equity in your home and therefore increases the risk for them.
  A broker might have set one up and added the cost to the mortgage but the lender's records wouklnot show this. A CMC would only find out if you produced the evidence - so you would, in effect, pay them for the privilege of doing the work yourself.
  It is conceivable that PPI might have been added to an unsecured loan but if you do not know who you borrowed from then a CMC cannot find out for you - because, as noted above, there is no database of loans in the public domain.
  If you think you might have had PPI on a loan, it should show in your loan documentation.
  

If you are unsure, you can always contact whoever sold you the loan and ask.

If you are not sure how to go about it, you can always contact the Financial Ombudsman Service on 0800 023 4567 and ask for help. Even the call will be free.

addedvaluebob wrote: »

Of course they could be former financial advisers trawling through old databases and lists of clients, in which case they would have information from previous files.

Those will be the same 'financial dvisers' who sold the endowments, pension transfers, some PPI, switched investments and pensions to get extra commission and now post from some pious holier than thou point of view about CMCs, many of which are run by their former colleagues, fellow advisers and the companies they represent in defending complaints from the public

This sounds plausible until somebody actually engages their brain - a task I suspect is beyond the capability of most CMCs.

Let us start with the those databases. Why would the ex adviser have such a database?

The First Data Protection Principle says "Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully",

If the individual was not their own client, then they stole that personal data. Last time I checked, stealing anything was not considered to be processing it lawfully.

Of couse, it could be that they have the information because they sold the product themselves -but then guess who was responsible for any missale.

Then the CMC has the problem with the Second Data Protection Principle, which says, "Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes."

To comply with that, they must then argue that they gathered the information with the purpose of enabling them to later pursue a complaint agains themselves.

What's more, since they would have had to obtain informed consent, they would need to have told their client that they intended to do so before actually gathering that information.

I wonder what their Professional Insurance company's view of that business model might be.

So if we stop to consider the ramifications of addedvaluebob's suggestion it fairly quickly becomes apparent that it is somewhat absurd.

addedvaluebob wrote: »

Because they still hold all paperwork and electronic information on hard drives

They are not stealing it because they are sharing it with another partner within the business group that is a common occurrence for companies large and small and is contained in the T & Cs when you sign up, which no-one reads

There are some a big flaws in this argument.

The OP says, "I have been pestered by PPi claims companies",

The ICO says in its direct marketing guidance:

"Organisations will need to be able to demonstrate that consent was knowingly given, clear and specific".

Why would the OP consider himself to have been pestered if he had knowingly, clearly and specifically given consent for those calls.

And if consent is obtained in a way that a consumer does not realise they are giving it, it can hardly be described as "informed"

addedvaluebob wrote: »

Any fact find will identify a series of products sold by other providers and advisers

This is true - but a fact find is simply a collection of personal data on a person at a particular point in time. It tells the adviser where his client is now. It does not tell him how he came to be there. Its purpose is to enable the adviser to make a suitable recommendation going forward.

addedvaluebob wrote: »

all of which would be considered 'fair game'

In its guidance, the ICO says,

"The second principle: organisations must only collect
personal data for specified purposes, and cannot later decide
to use it for other ‘incompatible’ purposes. So they cannot
use people’s details for marketing purposes if they originally
collected them for an entirely different purpose."

So using a fact find to call somebody up to market claims management services is clearly not permissible - unless that was discussed at the time it was completed.

If that is the case, though, they would normally be expected to get on with it there and then not hang around and do so some time later.

There are two other issues in this regard. The first is that if the adviser is introducing clients to a CMC then unless it is really just one or two a year they must be authorised by the MOJ in their own right

The second is that if they are in any way related to or rewarded by the CMC then FCA Principles 7 and 8 would require them to disclose this.

addedvaluebob wrote: »

See terms and conditions above

See the flaws in that argument above.

addedvaluebob wrote: »

It obviously becomes clear that the magpiecottage as a defender of financial advisers is desperate to present a scenario that completely ignores the facts.

I have cited my sources - the ICO and FCA in this instance. Elsewhere I have also quoted FOS.

It is unfortunate that some choose to resort to personal attack with allegations that cannot be substantiated (becaue they are false).

However, this does not make my observations any less true.