Wondering who to take the complaint to next, basically my Mum has exhausted the bank's proper complaints procedure and we don't feel the £100 compensation offered equates to the magnitude of the c*ck up.
Now looking at Ombudsman, however what about Sunday Times 'A Question of Money'? Better to go with either of these first?
If you are certain of your ground prepare a factual account of the dispute then email that to the banks marketing and PR dept (and Marketing Director) telling them that unless you get a response you are sending it to the places you mentioned plus watchdog and moneysaving expert
The FSA always helps. If its less than a total of £500 the Banks usually cough up at the mention of them cos they automatically get fined £500 for any complaint. Even if your mums complaint was that her hair was looking a bit green under the branch lights.
personally i have little faith in high street banking regulation after it was decided that the office of fair trading werent allowed to say if bank charges were fair?!
lol. I always laugh at people like you. "Shall I go to the broadsheets"
What makes you think the broadsheets care about your story? The bank has admitted it's wrong and offered you £100 compensation...what else do you want?
I think you need to call the bank and say you want to refer the matter to the regulator and ask them to make that a formal process.
I did this with my mortgage company recently and got a very positive result. Basically they said they were going to add a surcharge to my mortgage because the property had been let out for more than four years.
I said that was fine, I could understand why they needed to do this but I therefore wanted to switch provider without the exit penalties.
They said that I couldn't do this; so my argument was 'why can you change the terms on me but I can't change the terms on you?'
The FSA investigated the claim and found in my favour so they have deferred the surcharge until I am out of the fixed term of this particular product.
Which I thought was a positive result.
Unless you can really quantify your mums losses as being greater than £100 Id call it a day.
Ive taken my bank to the ombudsman and lost. But the Ombudsman did thoroughly consider the issue and provided a very detailed finding which I cant really find any legal or logical flaw in. Morally however, my bank is a hive of ****s. So to spite them Ive taken all my valuable business from them and left all the stuff that costs them money there (6 current accounts, with online banking, Direct Debits and Standing Orders)
We had the banks offer of compensation which we replied to, and they sent a final offer (the same amount) saying that they don't have to do more than that.
Situation concerns loss of family member's estate, personal documents, and we have admission of them messing up, so what they've offered is rather low.
Was all about to go with Ombudsman, but wondered whether The Sunday Times might be a better option initially or whether I could get in touch with both at the same time? (would probably confuse matters)
Assume Sunday Times would get in touch with their PR dept and things would move from there, but maybe the Ombudsman is more of an official route...
Jessica Investigates in the Telegraph?
Joe - move along son, you don't know the details of the situation. If someone stole your bike and then offered 50p for it you might want to pursue matters.
Stoner - thanks, looking through the Ombudsman website there are a lot of case studies where the compensation has been much more for a lot less however. Plus taking into account their guidelines, we should have an offer of more than £100 for time spent sorting this out.
Official channels before bleating to the papers, imho.
lol. I always laugh at people like you. "Shall I go to the broadsheets"What makes you think the broadsheets care about your story? The bank has admitted it's wrong and offered you £100 compensation...what else do you want?
Bad day at the office eh? 😐
[i]Official channels before bleating to the papers, imho. [/i]
+1
Thanks for the replies, agree that Ombudsman sounds the correct next step.
For the FSA / financial ombudsman to get involved you will need to be able to pass to them a record of all the phone-calls (time, dates), letters etc to the bank plus a note of times dates that you visited the bank to discus the problem etc.
Otherwise the FSA cannot do much to decide if there is anything for them to get involved in as the bank will say the matter is still being dealt with.
http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/complaints.htm
fight the power stoner... I like that I have done similiar
Exhaust official means first