Ombudsman upholds 25% of complaints

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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The Financial Services Ombudsman has published his [broken link removed] today for the period Jan to June 2010. This is important as it's the first report covering the new Ombudsman who took up his post in January.

He has upheld 25% of the reports which is a much lower level than Joe Meade. There are no comparative figures. However, I calculate that last year they adjudicated in favour of 41% of complaints.


I can think of a few different reasons for this:

  • The new ombudsman may be less consumer friendly
  • The new ombudsman may have settled more complaints informally so that a formal decision was not required
  • The financial services companies may have been settling complaints themselves earlier on, so ones which would have been settled in favour of the customer by the Ombudsman, were being settled by the companies.
  • A change in the quality of the complaints submitted
  • A change in the type of complaints e.g. more investment complaints
 
I think the new ombudsman is definitely less pro-consumer. My mother had a good claim in and was refused.

My mother's card was stolen and her PIN had been observed whilst shopping (shoulder-surfing is the term though the thief was a good ten feet away) however, given the location of the terminal, inputting the PIN whilst blocking the pad from everyone would be nigh-on impossible, she did block it from people behind her in the queue but obviously not from people on the other side. The Banks own guidelines for protecting your PIN state to take reasonable precautions, which she did, but the Ombudsman still found in their favour.
 
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