The art of complaining alive and well

by John Fitzsimons on 04 September 2009  |  0 comments
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According to new data from the FSA, more than NINE MILLION complaints were made against financial firms between 2006 and 2008!

Us Brits love a good moan. Whether it's the weather, the cost of a pint, or our national sports teams' failings, there is always something to be grumpy about.

And new figures from the FSA have revealed that the performance of financial companies is also likely to provoke an outburst of angst - apparently more than nine million individual complaints were made to financial companies between 2006 and 2008.

The FSA promised to publish this data more than a year ago, in an effort to improve transparency, and it certainly makes for interesting reading.

Banks are undoubtedly the villains of the piece, not only taking the title of the most complained about sector, but also being on the receiving end of a significant surge in complaints - while banks provoked almost 760,000 complaints in the first half of 2006, that figure rocketed to more than a million by the second half of 2008.

And it's current accounts that are by a distance the financial product most complained about, with more than 3.5 million complaints - a staggering number. Most of these complaints came about due to claims of overcharging, reaching a peak of a whopping 651,901 complaints in the first half of 2001.

Since then, the number of complaints regarding overcharging has fallen off a cliff, but don't be fooled into thinking that represents an improvement - the FSA is simply allowing banks to postpone dealing with certain overcharging complaints until after the High Court has completed its test case on the matter. How very transparent...

The supposed bogeymen of financial products, self-cert mortgages and lifetime mortgages (a form of equity release) were right at the bottom of the table, in contrast, with just 14,000 and 2,100 complaints respectively over the time period. Indeed complaints about mortgages generally, reached just 12,700 by 2008.

Of course, these are just bare numbers, and it's debatable just how useful they are. But what is encouraging is that clearly Brits are not willing to take shoddy service and treatment from their financial firms and are happy to kick up a stink to ensure they are treated fairly.

If you feel that your financial firm has not measured up to your expectations, don't just have a moan about them with your friends - put it in writing and make sure you get a satisfactory response. Unless these firms are held to account, they will continue to walk all over us, so don't let them off the hook.