Well if you have evidence of this, then you should bring it to the attention of the Central Bank. They won't get back to you but they will take it up with the institution and if your accusation holds up, they will be told to redress these thousands of people and no one will need to go to the Ombudsman.
The findings have been submitted to the both the Consumer Affairs and Regulation sections of the Central Bank.
These deal with the treatment of historic payment holidays which were legitimately sought by a minimum of 1,500 account holders whose accounts were incorrectly reported on, to the CBI as distressed borrowers for 68 months. Many of these had passed through the Bank's (their Auditors, and the independent, forensic Accountants) Tracker Mortgage Review, where the misreporting was also missed. The first report to the CBI noted a time window of effected accounts of 18 months. By the time the Letters of explanation issued by this particular Bank, the window for effected accounts grew to 68 months. We are only surmising but it is highly unlikely to have only been 1,500 accounts that were incorrectly red flagged to the CBI by the time their negligence was discovered.
In that timeframe, all of those accounts were described as distressed, the institution moved these dealing to their arrears support unit and if you sought new money be it there or elsewhere in that time frame, a quick search of your credit rating had you as a distressed borrower. I should add that the 68 months ran well into the COVID years where undoubtably payment breaks/ Holidays increased significantly, indeed a figure of 175,000 payment breaks across the industry was noted at the Central Bank's symposium in Nov' 22. Just how many of those have been misreported on is anyone's guess.
You are certainly correct to say that we are annoyed, but would like to think that we have retained some degree of sense with our dealing with the FSPO and the institution involved. We would maintain that the timelines are ridiculously poor at this point and not because of delays caused by us an ordinary consumers.
