To ask a completely moronic question about PPI?

[checkingforballoons]

Yes, I am embarrassed to be asking such a stupid question but Google isn’t helping What information do I actually need to give to a company that looks into whether you’re owed anything? Would full name and previous addresses suffice or do they need more detail - account numbers and whatnot?
Please dumb down answers massively

I would advise not using a company to make the claim on your behalf. I worked in PPI departments at Lloyd's and barclays and whenever a company was acting on a customers behalf, all they did was send a generic letter saying 'Mrs X has been misold, please investigate.'
That's it. Then if you are due a refund, that company will get a huge amount of your payout for basically sending a generic letter.
Your bank will need to speak to you (more often than not) to get more details about your complaint anyway. Customers who used to refuse to speak and asked me to speak to the 3rd party company did themselves no favours because a, we can't speak to the third parties, only you (bank policy, data protection etc) and b, you may be able to give us more information the help your claim.
When the bank contacts you, they are not trying to catch you out, it would not be worth the fine they would get from FOS/FCA
Just write a letter to your bank saying you may have had PPI, explain your reasons why you feel you were misold and the bank will then do the rest.

Most finance organisations will have a PPI claim form on their website.

Fill it in (name, dob, previous names and addresses)

The bank then tells you if you had PPI and if you did you fill in a generic form to claim it.

Then they send you a cheque.

You would still have to do all this if you used a 3rd party, so there is no point.

They take about a 3rd of your pay out. I received £9300 so they would have had £3100 from me just for forwarding some forms.

Check the Martin Lewis website for all the details.

@checkingforballoons I used the MSE site but contacted pretty much every company I could think of that I MIGHT have had financial dealings with, and they checked their own records. Some got back to me saying I'd never had an account with them, others found they owed me money and gave me £ back.

It was ridiculously easy.

It's exactly the same thing that the PPI companies will do. They just bank on people thinking it's hard or onerous!

Check your credit history on Experian etc, they sometimes have the list of the companies you have had credit with in the past and then work your way through them yourself - dead easy. Don’t pay anyone money to do it for you

You're probably best looking at your Experian credit file as it can give you some information about past creditors.

Good idea about credit report! Thanks all.
As I said, really stupid questions!