Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

[fargon]

Hi, I am new to this forum and have a couple of questions relating to the way FOS works. I have seen a couple of links on the forums to sites which provide a lot of rather surprising information - (to me at least).

Reason I ask is that I have a dispute with a loan company (with regards to a family member) and referred the complaint to FOS a couple of years ago. There are 2 cases open as the PPI side has to be dealt with separately. There has been a lot of communication between myself and FOS Adjudicators. They have made an assessment (mostly in favour of the debt company), although I am trying to get through to them that quite a few of the criteria they based it on is wrong (due to their misunderstanding of the facts OR due to them taking the debt company's word without asking for evidence to back it up). I naively thought I was dealing with trained financial experts, but since reading the links I mentioned above (which refer to things like the (lack of) qualifications required to be an adjudicator, blindly accepting some facts and ignoring others), I am not so sure. I am trying to remain objective with regard to the claims but, for example, when a company's own complaints dept ADMITS in writing that they failed to cancel insurances as requested to do so (ie within the cooling off period), the adjudicator does NOT uphold my complaint that the company acted wrongly (stating that they cannot be sure the request was actually made)!! In fact this letter of admission only came to light when the FOS themselves asked the company for documentation and the FOS actually provided me with a copy of this letter! Another comment, when I asked a question about the company's limited offer, and backed it up with facts from the company's documentation regarding an amount that appears to have not been considered, the response from the adjudicator was that they would "pass this to the company for their comments, but I am led to believe it will not change their offer". Methinks minds have been made up already and I felt the need to remind them of their job role at this point, so am guessing that my future interaction could be a bit strained!!

Due to this, I am getting close to asking for the cases to be passed up to the Ombudsman. Just wondering if anyone has similar experience or knowledge of the FOS internal workings. The questions I have are:

1) Do I need to continue thrashing out every last detail with the adjudicators BEFORE I can request it goes to an actual Ombudsman - I really am getting weary of responding to their 6 page letters with yet another reply pointing out the errors of their previous one, only to have them come back saying their decisions remain the same anyway?

2) As well as making a case to the Ombudsman about the facts, do I state that I have escalated because I am unhappy with the adjudicators findings and/or competence?

3) I have a fear that the Ombudsman will tend to side with his/her adjudicators and that I could actually end up being worse off by escalating (their decision is final etc) - is this an unrational fear??

4) Any other advice that may help get a proper resolution.

Many thanks in advance...

[Magrew]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

My experience of the FOS sounds similar to yours, it continued that way up to the final decision from the ombudsman. It also took years. I started discussing the matter with them in December 2009, the final decision came in July 2012. I rejected that decision. Now I am heading to the courts with my complaint.

Mind you it may just have been bad timing that my case hit them just as the PPI fiasco was kicking off.

In my case the Bank had admitted their error, the referral to the FOS was just over the quantum. The FOS decided that the value should be around 6% of what the bank had already offered. I found this quite shocking. It was around 2% of where I thought the value should be. Since I have discovered that my value appears to be low if it were to follow existing case law (Durkin v HFC et al).

It appears that the FOS are doing ok for PPI claims but I am not convinced of their worth when it gets a bit less formulaic.

[dogtired]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

In my case too they seemed to "side" with the OC (HBOS and Welcome) and seemed to give them lots of opportunity to come to them with "evidence".
I also rejected the Welcome decision and a just starting the process of seeing if I can make a Court claim. The HBOS is still on going.

[fargon]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

Thanks for quick response Magrew! Wow - pretty outrageous - and there was me thinking that the FOS was there to find an amicable settlement, not cr@p all over someone when the bank had already admitted their error. At the very worst he should have come back with words to the effect that, in his opinion, the bank had made a fair offer & that was your lot...!! At least you have a precedent case you can refer to, as no doubt the defendant will throw the FOS decision in the judge's face at the earliest opportunity.

Your story does sum up my fears though - that the ombudsman may dictate an offer that is worse than is currently on the table.

Best of luck with the case when it does come up!!

[fargon]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

Thanks Dogtired - that's been my experience as well. I'm maybe paranoid, but everything points to the adjudicator having a good working relationship with 'the business' to the point of just taking their word for things, while I am just a thorn in their side who is stopping them getting the case closed (and meeting targets??). Unfortunately, I can only challenge it if they come out with something that is definitely wrong - a lot of their decisions do not actually give a specific reason other than that they do not believe the business did anything wrong. You'd think they would be very familiar with Welcome by now (having read some of the problems that the company has been through)!!

[dogtired]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

With the help and support of all the people on LB I hope that we can support and pass on experiance to help others. x

[QCKate]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

It doent help but my experience of the FOS has also been dreadful with two complaints. Very slow and always giving the benefit of the doubt to the bank. They even rejected one complaint because the bank were following there own internal policies. The fact that they aren't in any terms, conditions, agrrements, leaflets or letters sent to me seems to make no difference!!! They ignore points made to them and got two or three important facts (not opinions) wrong. I would have better off going to the small claims court.

QCK

[SpringerSpaniel]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

I am a former adjudicator of the FOS.

The FOS's main activity is or was endowment policy complaints.

The quality and knowledge levels of different adjudicators varies; some of legal backgrounds but others do not.

The level of fairness in my opinion is less than going through the courts, and the amounts of compensation which can be awarded are MUCH lower, but there is less risk and it is meant to be more user-friendly.

[fargon]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

Many thanks for that info.

[fargon]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

From your former role as an FOS adjudicator, what is your experience with regard to cases that the complainant requests go all the way to an Ombudsman. The main question really is, how often does the complainant actually end up worse off by pushing it to the Ombudsman?
With my current claim, the offer on the table is for some compensation, but I don't believe it goes far enough or takes EVERYTHING into account. My train of thought is that the current offer is based on an adjudicator who basically takes most things the business says as fact, without asking for evidence (only when I challenge it do we find out that it was not fact). When he asks the business if they would pay back charges, they simply say 'no' and that is that. If the business is prepared to offer SOME compensation from that very weak/non-existent challenge by an adjudicator, is it reasonable to believe that an Ombudsman would, at the very worst, leave the offer as it is or could escalating the claim to him actually backfire?

[Ruby]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

I have NEVER had any luck with the FOS! In fact to be honest, thanks to LB I am probably over qualified to work there!

[Captain Haddock]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

I got the FO involved against Halifax Insurance over a household flooding claim. The whole thing took one year to get resolved! It seemed to take forever to reach adjudication stage and I was even told that it was at that stage when it was not! When it actually did reach the ajudicator, he told me that if Halfax rejected his findings they had the right to send the whole thing back to be re-examined which, given that the FO was/is swapmed with complaints, could take up to another year to be finally settled. I wasn't prepared to let it drag on any longer and I ended up settling with Halifax for 60% of the money that my wife and I had shelled out in repairing the home a year previous. And even then Halifax insisted they were paying out as a 'goodwill gesture', the *******s!

Be prepared for a long haul, but stick at it.

[TUTTSI]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

A friend of mine has had an awful time with the FOS, but in their defence I would say that she probably said to much to the adjudicator in as much as she was complaining that Aviva did not notify her that her life assurance was comming to the end. It appears whilst speaking to the adjudicator which appeared to be a friendly conversation, the adjudicator asked if she would have taken out further insurance if she had been notified.... unfortunately my friend went into chapter and verse how much more difficult it is to complete new proposal forms and therefore the adjudicator said that since she was not going to replace that insurance it went in Avivas favour. She is furious, I told her that she should never have told them that and kept it simple and she should have just said that she would have replaced it. Trouble is a lot of people do not know how to deal with these friendly questions and think they are speaking to their friends and forget that everything is being recorded.

My advice if the adjudicator calls you for a discussion - keep it short and sweet and do not over give your responses as this will go against you no matter how friendly the adjudicator is, they can only go on what you say.

[Captain Haddock]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

'
'3) I have a fear that the Ombudsman will tend to side with his/her adjudicators and that I could actually end up being worse off by escalating (their decision is final etc) - is this an unrational fear??' - You are quite right to have this fear, for within my two experiences with the FO, the first one they sided with Halifax on a long-drawn-out PPI issue, stating that they were happy with Halifax internal handling of the dispute. I never got to see their communications so God knows what went on.

My second case, detail above, was dead-on my side; there was no way Halifax could not be held to be unnacountable for what they did. But I am of the opinion that there is a culture of trying to put off the complainant at the FO and also, as stated elsehwere in this thread, that the FO gets its head rattled by the banks, ad nauseam, whom they have to approach for info and that they can and do side with the defendant banks regularly. I would be loathe to go through the whole process again!

[TUTTSI]

Re: Financial Ombudsman Service - General info/advice required

Did you ever take you complaint to the CEO in the first instant before embarking with the FOS?

I normally find that the CEO's office deal with complaints very speedily and efficiently.

'
'3) I have a fear that the Ombudsman will tend to side with his/her adjudicators and that I could actually end up being worse off by escalating (their decision is final etc) - is this an unrational fear??' - You are quite right to have this fear, for within my two experiences with the FO, the first one they sided with Halifax on a long-drawn-out PPI issue, stating that they were happy with Halifax internal handling of the dispute. I never got to see their communications so God knows what went on.

My second case, detail above, was dead-on my side; there was no way Halifax could not be held to be unnacountable for what they did. But I am of the opinion that there is a culture of trying to put off the complainant at the FO and also, as stated elsehwere in this thread, that the FO gets its head rattled by the banks, ad nauseam, whom they have to approach for info and that they can and do side with the defendant banks regularly. I would be loathe to go through the whole process again!