Financial Ombudsman Complaints

[knoxvillain]

Anyone know roughly how long it takes them to start dealing with non-charge related complaints? I'm sick of getting "we've not been able to look at your complaint yet" letters from them. Starting to think I should have just gone straight to court with it instead. My complaint is related to a default and lack of Notice of Default and defaulted CCA request.

[tifo]

my experience with them has been very bad.

they've taken over 12 months on 90% of my complaints and then favoured the bank in obvious ways.

they decide what the bank says, not what is fair and reasonable.

i'm now thinking i would have been better off going to court 12 months ago.

[knoxvillain]

I have to admit, I'm starting to run out of patience and considering going to court instead as well, it's just lack of confidence that's putting me off. I'd hate to take them to court after I've given them a FOS judgement in their favour they can give to your judge to see.

[tifo]

Originally Posted by knoxvillain

I'd hate to take them to court after I've given them a FOS judgement in their favour they can give to your judge to see.

This is what i've got, but in my case the decisions from the FOS are flawed in law and regulations. They just don't want to say it.

You can pass it to the Service Review Team if you're not happy with an Ombudsman decision, which is made in review of an Adjudicator decision. But they won't change it, just look at how it was handled.

Then there is the Independant Assessor and lastly the Chief Ombudsman.

I'v complained to my MP who has passed it to the Treasury to look into. My complaint is that the FOS decisions in my cases are in breach of their own statutory duties, as put under the FSA handbook DISP and the FSMA 2000, and also against law and regulations which is what they're meant to follow. I have a good thread on it here.

[knoxvillain]

are you now pursuing the complaints through the courts?

[tifo]

Originally Posted by knoxvillain

are you now pursuing the complaints through the courts?

No, as they've decided in favour of the banks, my charges are out of the 6 year limit because the FOS took over 12 months in deciding, and i cannot afford the fees because i'm not exempt anymore.

So, the consumer loses again and fairness has not prevailed.

[knoxvillain]

so has anyone actually managed to leverage CCA non-compliance to get a default removed that you know of?

[knoxvillain]

Dear knoxvillain

Thank you for your e-mail. I would advise that we take cases in strict date rotation to be fair to all complainants. The date we use for allocation is the date your complaint passed into the casework area, in this instance that being xx xxxxxxxx 2008. I can inform you that we have received the papers requested from Bank of Scotland and these will be reviewed along with your submissions in due course. We are aware that your complaint is not charges related but we still do have a heavy workload. Unfortunately I cannot give you an exact timescale except to say we are regularly taking cases for allocation.

We will keep you advised of developments and your patience in this matter is appreciated.

knox

[wednesday1867]

Im in the process of taking two creditors to court to have defaults removed, due to lack of CCA.

One is Egg and the other is HSBC, i cca'd them both June/July last year, HSBC sent me an unsigned agreement, Egg sent me nothing. I chased them through DCA's up until March this year, when both DCA's sent me letters telling me neither company have been able to supply the document.

I sent them both LBA's today giving them both 14 days to respond. I will start court action on both in a fortnight.

Im only claiming to have the defaults removed, but to get the costs down, im claiming compensation upto but not going over £1,499, im not sure if it will get to court, or even if ill get compensation, but id be more than happy with just the defaults removed.

Theres threads in the HSBC & Egg forums, if ya wanna check them out.

[knoxvillain]

got a call today saying complaint is now being looked at. So it's taken roughly 5 months from mailing the complaint to it being assigned to an ajudicator.

[bing]

Originally Posted by knoxvillain

got a call today saying complaint is now being looked at. So it's taken roughly 5 months from mailing the complaint to it being assigned to an ajudicator.

I'm about ten days away from hitting six months. My complaint is nothing to do with charges either. In fact, it's pretty serious. My bank, BOS, effectively cut me off from all my finances on the other side of the world, lied to me with such blatent contemp, then offered me £50,000 compensation.... then retracted it and replaced it with an offer of £50 due to an "error".

Beggars belief.

[knoxvillain]

That's weird, I would have thought they would have been dealt with in a first-come-first-served basis. Have you contacted FOS at all to try and escalate it?

50k would have be nice...

[bing]

Yep, they just say it shouldn't be too long now. The whole saga has been going on since last October.

[knoxvillain]

anyone know if the FOS imposes time limits on the banks having to respond to their requests? I was contacted by FOS to say they were looking into my complaint just under a month ago and they were waiting on info from the bank which would take "a few weeks". Do HBOS have a set time to respond within?

[tifo]

Originally Posted by knoxvillain

anyone know if the FOS imposes time limits on the banks having to respond to their requests?

They don't seem to set any time limits, banks can have as long as they want, only the consumer has to respond within 14 days to any letters.

The answer is that banks are 'very busy' with lots of these type of claims.