Did you know Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has a Fraud & Frequent Complainers Team? If you make one too many complaints to LBG, they will refer any and all future complaints to this team to complaint manage!

I have recently had cause to complain to LBG about a number of issues (e.g. not putting service first and not being treated as a customer fairly).

Having contacted LBG to find out about the progress of my complaint, I was informed by one of their Customer Service Advisors (CSAs) that my complaint was taking longer than normal, to be allocated to a complaint manager. When I enquired as to why it was taking longer than normal, the CSA advised me it was because my complaint had been reallocated to one of their specialist teams. I asked for some clarity around what that meant and also what specialist team, they were referring too.

The CSA then advised me that my complaint had been passed to the PCA Fraud & Frequent Complainers Team. I have seen internal documentation, which shows LBG refer to this team as the “F&F Team”.

So for clarity, if you make several complaints to LBG, at some stage they will stop dealing with your complaint as a normal everyday customer, and start allocating your complaints to one of a small team of Case Complaint Managers, within this “F&F Team. To give you some sort of indication on the possible trigger point for this “specialist team” I have probably put in about 9 complaints over a 20 year banking history with them, so I assume the referral threshold for allocation, to the “F&F Team”, isn’t that high!

As a result of this experience, my impression is that LBG must have an automatic flag marker system in place. I would be really interested to know what their policy is on this and whether the processing of this data is manual or automatic.

On a separate note, one of the Data Subject Access Team’s CSAs, has recently advised me that LBG customers can now submit SARs online. This is done via an Online DSAR Form.

https://apply.lloydsbank.co.uk/personal/a/gforms?formId=F010&prodType=GN

PROs

You do not have to pay the £10 statutory fee, it’s free!

I have used this new service twice and it is much quicker in comparison to the conventional route of submission (i.e. recorded delivery directly to the DSAR Team or via your local branch in person).

CONs

Once you complete the Online DSAR Form, it moves to the next screen and tells you that you have successfully submitted the Form. However, it doesn’t give you a URN to prove this, and it doesn’t send you a copy of the Form to your email address. You then literally have to wait for the DSAR Team at LBG to write to you and acknowledge receipt of your DSAR.

I am not saying this is the best thing since slice bread, but certainly another option for us consumers! They don’t advertise this new SAR submission route, and even there CSAs aren’t aware of it.

Thank you. This is extremely interesting.

I'm going to start a new thread for the online SAR route so that it will tweet up to all our followers. I wonder how long it has been in existence. I imagine that it is something that has been set up in anticipation of GDPR because under the new regime you don't have to pay the £10 and you can at actually make your SAR using email.

On the matter of the Frequent Complainers list, this is very disturbing and I wonder how often they ever admit this in their data disclosures. Maybe I'm not on the list – but they certainly haven't admitted it to me. I think I will tweak the new GDPR template so that it also enquires as to whether one is on any particular list or category and if so what.

It will be very interesting to see if anyone else comes up with knowledge of this Frequent Complainers List.

I don't find this interesting or surprising. Banks often pay redress when settling complaints so some fraudsters and consumers have figured out they can abuse this with fictitious or exaggerated complaints.

9 complaints in total. But were some of them made within a short time span?

Well I'm afraid that I find it very disturbing. If there is some assumption that a frequent complainer should automatically be suspected of fraud, then I think that this is a very serious matter. Unfortunately many people need to complain frequently because they receive such poor service from the banks and also because unlike the majority of the population who understandably want a quiet life, certain people are prepared to lie down and take it. Those people easily come within the category of frequent complainers and frankly I think they should be encouraged to complain as frequently as possible.

We are not in France, after all.

If a company is in the wrong, has ver poor customer services and thinks they are more powerful than the law be prepared for the long fight do not give up and go to the top. If you have all the proof you will win in the end. I am posting over the next few days all the directors contact details to help everyone with their own individual fights