Customer Feedback and Customer Complaints
Our expertise has meant that we have been winning compensation for consumers from banks and building societies since 1989. Our aim has always been to win full and fair compensation for consumers as efficiently as possible and to leave no stone unturned whilst trying to achieve this aim. However, please tell us promptly if you feel that any aspect of our work for you has been or still is unsatisfactory in any way at all. We welcome customer feedback and any suggestions you may care to make as to how we can improve our services. You may help us to deal with something we might otherwise have overlooked.
Delays in winning compensation are increasing for many classes of complaint
We notify clients of the likely timescale's in which we hope to win them compensation but these can change due to circumstances beyond our control. For example in 2010 many cases regarding PPI were put on hold (against the rules of their regulators) which resulted in a large backlog of cases at the Financial Ombudsman Service and long delays. Now that this case has been resolved there are still delays and the FSA has introduced a temporary rule for a large number of cases allowing the banks increased time to respond to complaints from the usual 8 weeks to 16 weeks.
Delays can be much longer in other classes of complaint unrelated to bank charges. For example, CLAIMS is a specialist in investigating claims for compensation from Windsor Life regarding policies sold in the period 1987-1995 by agents of General Portfolio a company which was later renamed GAN and joined the group of dead companies labeled Windsor Life in 1998. Several of these complaints have taken three, four or even more years to settle and in a recent case an Ombudsman awarded our client's costs against the firm for its failure to calculate loss accurately over a period of five years.
Customer Complaints
As a regulated business we offer a formal complaints procedure with strict timetables and rules. This follows the exact requirements of the rules set down by the Ministry of Justice. They are available on its website: www.claimsregulation.gov.uk if you wish to read them.
1. If you wish to lodge a formal complaint in respect of any claims management service we have provided for you that is regulated under the Compensation Act 2006 please either call or write to the senior partner, Paul Cooper, who will acknowledge your complaint within five business days of receiving it and send you a response within four weeks.
2. It is hoped that our response will be a final response addressing your complaint in full, but if we are not in a position to resolve it, possibly because we have not received information from yourself or some other third party, we will write to you again after eight weeks. This eight-week letter will either be a final response or if we are still awaiting information will explain the delay and notify you when we expect to send you a final response to your complaint.
3. Our letter will also inform you that if you are dissatisfied with the delay, or indeed the final response, you may refer our handling of the complaint to the Claims Management Regulator at P O Box 7824 Burton on Trent Staffordshire DE14 9DP This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel. 0845 4506858. The regulator's job is merely to ensure that our handling of your complaint has been correct and in accordance with the rules.