Financial Ombudsman Service

[2and3and4]

Obviously there's something a bit fishy about the keenness of financial bods and businesses to direct the dissatisfied to the FOS once their complaints have been pooh-poohed.

Then there's the huge volume of dissatisfaction with the FOS expressed on Trustpilot, which the FOS seems to think is merely people dissatisfied with the outcome of FOS decisions, which may be true to a certain extent but clearly not true of the majority.

Hmmmm

Why is this level of dissatisfaction with the FOS not being examined, or are all these people and their issues just to be ignored because everything's bent these days and it's naive to expect anything else?

[The Leaper]

2and3and4 said:

Obviously there's something a bit fishy about the keenness of financial bods and businesses to direct the dissatisfied to the FOS once their complaints have been pooh-poohed.

Then there's the huge volume of dissatisfaction with the FOS expressed on Trustpilot, which the FOS seems to think is merely people dissatisfied with the outcome of FOS decisions, which may be true to a certain extent but clearly not true of the majority.

Hmmmm

Why is this level of dissatisfaction with the FOS not being examined, or are all these people and their issues just to be ignored because everything's bent these days and it's naive to expect anything else?

Based on my experience as a volunteer adviser with The Pensions Ombudsman's Office, which has close ties to FOS, I suspect that the problem is the complainant's expectations versus their rights. All too often I've seen complainants raise issues based on what they think are their rights but this is proved to not be the case after investigation. Careful explanation is needed but sometimes not accepted, hence dissatisfaction.

R

[Glassman]

There is clearly a huge number of 'if you don't get your way, take it to the Ombudsman' cases.

Must take quite a bit of sifting through.

[trickywoo]

I had cause to contact them in August.

It took three months for them to get to the stage of being ready to investigate.

My issue was an erroneously locked account which it took the bank 5 weeks to address.

The lesson I learnt is not to rely on a single bank, ideally have multiple as nobody is going to help you when something goes wrong.

The ICO are probably worse, not that they have any teeth anyway. Complete waste of time, money, everything.

[2and3and4]

Who funds/pays for/sponsors the FOS? The taxpayer, or the firms against whom the complaints are being made?

[s111dpc]

2and3and4 said:

Who funds/pays for/sponsors the FOS? The taxpayer, or the firms against whom the complaints are being made?

From memory financial services firms are charged a levy based on volume of complaints that go through FOS. In addition they also pay a fee per case referred to them - for my last firm this was over £500 per case, so no real incentive for firms to push cases to the FOS.

[Heathwood]

2and3and4 said:

Who funds/pays for/sponsors the FOS? The taxpayer, or the firms against whom the complaints are being made?

Annual levies paid by companies covered by the FOS, plus individual case fees paid by the companies to which the appeal relates.

[The Leaper]

2and3and4 said:

Who funds/pays for/sponsors the FOS? The taxpayer, or the firms against whom the complaints are being made?

I posted earlier about The Pensions Ombudsman's Office. The TPO is a "Non Government Organisation", often referred to as a quango..

TPO is funded by a small per member levy charged to UK occupational pension plans. The levy is paid to DWP who then agree budgets/funding etc with the TPO.

R.