Overview of Complaints 2023

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SaySomething

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The Ombudsman is committed to publishing an overview of complaints and their progress by the end of Q1 every year.

Therefore, it is due by Easter Sunday/the next 10 days. When published, the link will be available here: https://www.fspo.ie/publications/overview-of-complaints.asp

It will be interesting to see if the Ombudsman acknowledges the significant delay (at least several months) for certain complaints that exit adjudication but the preliminary decision is not immediately issued due to required oversight.

Other items to watch out for include the number of upheld vs rejected complaints, the overall number of complaints processed compared to previous years, and the number of complaints resolved via mediation.
 
SaySomething said:
the number of upheld vs rejected complaints,
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I view this two ways.

On the one hand if he rejects 90% of the complaints, people say that he is biased.

However, if industry does its job properly and resolves customers complaints directly or at mediation, then the only complaints left would be the chancers.

I look at the published decisions and, I have to say, that I agree with most of them.

A lot of tracker complaints were properly rejected e.g. "When I took out my mortgage no one told me I could have a tracker".

Brendan
 
A number of matters spring to mind. 1st is fspo never refers to unfair contract terms directive and it should. 2. What does acting in the consumers interest mean if they didn't tell you about tracker option at the time? The problem of financial ignorance is a big issue
3rd since the publication of cases where a case is decided one way and then a similar case is the opposite is going to be a real problem. Institutions will have acted in response to case one way and then there is a complete about face. What's the reasoning fir the new decision and was first negligence?
 
WizardDr said:
fspo never refers to unfair contract terms directive and it should.
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A court might have to refer to this directive, but the Ombudsman would not be obliged to.


The FSPO is not bound by legal technicalities. They make decisions inherently on what is fair.
They will often say that they find something was unfair.

I have not seen them say "That might be unfair, but it's in accordance with the contract terms so I dismiss the complaint."

One of the decisions I disagree with was the dismissal of the "discounted tracker" case. But I did not see the submissions so I don't know how well the case was argued.

I have seen some cases which were very badly argued and it would have been hard for the Ombudsman to uphold the complaint.

I would imagine that if the complainant brought up the Unfair Terms Directive, the Ombudsman would refer to it in his decision. He might decide that it was not relevant.

Brendan
 
Just to add that the Ombudsman has an influence way beyond the published decisions. I had a substantial issue with a company pension that was simply being ignored, for nearly two years. Once I got the FSPO involved things moved along quickly, to a satisfactory resolution. Without their input, I'd have been left swinging...
 
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