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FINANCIAL OMBUDSMAN I had written to the Financial Ombudsman because I had, under the terms of my house insurance, a legal expenses cover for the services of a solicitor. As will be seen under the Link solicitors, I had occasion to utilize that cover for the first time. As a result of sending supporting documents to my insurance company, I had been allocated a solicitor who openly admitted at the first of a total of two meetings, he had no experience whatsoever in the subject matter of my problem, which was employment law. When I had realized that this lack of knowledge and experience, coupled to his unwillingness to ask for help from his colleagues, was seriously impacting my case, I had rung and written to my insurers to ask for advice and help. Contrary to their pledge to get back to their customers within 2 hours, it had taken 4 months of persistent phoning and writing to get into communication with them. They claimed no record of my phone calls, but when presented with a copy of the bill, conditionally apologized. I had eventually followed there complaints process up to chief executive, before finally getting into communication, by which time it was too late. I had discovered the manager of the department in question was a solicitor, and as the case was investigating the negligence and possible losses caused by that negligence, I was not overly surprised at my lack of progress. The Financial Ombudsman is apparently inundated with complaints, and according to television reports, have hired a number of assistants to handle the first layer of complaints. They are paid a bonus for each case they can “complete”, and according to television reports, there is a lack of consistency between complaint handlers for similar categories of complaints. In my case, the response from the Ombudsman’s office after waiting months was simply amazing, and showed a complete lack of understanding as to the circumstances. There were huge flaws in the logic of the response, which gave the impression it was generic. I wrote back asking for escalation of my complaint, and was responded to by the Manager of the department. His response contradicted points made in the first response, and showed an equal lack of research into the problem and my complaints. I have now been told in a letter sent in March 2004, that the matter will be referred upwards, but due to the number of complaints, “I could be waiting a long time”. It should be noted that in any event, the findings of the Ombudsman is not binding, and they may advise legal action to resolve some issues. I eventually recieved a very short reply simply stating that the decision of the two previous reports were supported. The fact that these two reports differed significantly on key points, went unnoticed. So much for the Financial Ombudsman |
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