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Complaints against business rise

Published on 25 Feb 2010 under category: legal

Businesses need to learn about how to handle complaints better, according to an industry watchdog.

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) revealed in its latest report an 18 per cent increase in the number of complaints by consumers in the second half of the year.

Eighty-eight per cent of the rise related to the same 155 financial businesses, out of more than 100,000 firms  covered by the Ombudsman.

A breakdown of the reported complaints found that five financial services firms in particular were responsible for over half of all the new complaints, by collectively accounting for 46,979 cases.

Alliance & Leicester received a large number of new complaints (1,935), largely centred on banking and credit (1,232).

Despite the increase, the number of requests upheld in favour of the consumer dropped from 59 per cent to 53 per cent at the end of last year.

David Thomas, the interim chief ombudsman, said: "There is evidently still room for significant improvement in the way other financial businesses handle complaints - judged by the proportion of cases where we overturn the decision that the businesses have themselves come to in their own earlier investigation of their customer complaints.

"The data we have released today clearly shows that some businesses still need to do more to ensure that they deal with their customers' complaints effectively and fairly - so that consumers do not then need to escalate their dissatisfaction to the ombudsman."

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