What about the Financial Ombudsman?

[cj]

I am waitng for a reply from my bank to my claim for a refund of charges(£88 for being overdrawn £33 for 5 days with 2 card transactions!) - already rebuffed twice by the local branch. Before I discovered this site I was planning to use the ombudsman service. Has anyone tried this route? Could it produce a full refund or just a reduction to an amount deemed fair? Or is the court route better/ quicker?

	The Financial Ombudsman Service For the most part, don't bother. The Ombudsman is an industry arranged service which is under-resourced, takes too long, lacks clear transparency. You have no idea what evidence the FOS has received from the bank or how your complain has really been handled. The FOS is the preferred complaints route for the banking industry. The county court is to be preferred by consumers for its speed, openness, the quality of its awards and also because it will award 8% interest on top of any damages won by you. The Ombudsman should normally be used to solving little technical difficulties or customer service problems which you have expereinced with your bank.

[Lotta Littlies]

I don't think that this is a case for the ombudsman as they are there to deal with complaints. What you are doing is not complaining about a service but asking for monies taken from you illegally to be repaid and the two are completely different, hence the ombudsman route is a waste of time imo.

Lotta

	The Financial Ombudsman Service For the most part, don't bother. The Ombudsman is an industry arranged service which is under-resourced, takes too long, lacks clear transparency. You have no idea what evidence the FOS has received from the bank or how your complain has really been handled. The FOS is the preferred complaints route for the banking industry. The county court is to be preferred by consumers for its speed, openness, the quality of its awards and also because it will award 8% interest on top of any damages won by you. The Ombudsman should normally be used to solving little technical difficulties or customer service problems which you have expereinced with your bank.