Ombudsman

[nicetobehere]

If your complaint was not resolved with the mortgage company so you take this case to Ombudsman would the mortgage company put you in disadvantage or it wouldnt affect anything on you. It's about refund of fees.

If you have a complaint with a company that's subject to the Ombudsman's jurisidiction (they need to tell you this when they respond to your complaint) then you can go to the Ombudsman for no cost and it has no impact on your contract/relationship with the company. However the Ombudsman can't look at every type of complaint and won't look at it at all until you have exhausted the company's own complaints process (in other words, you have to give the company the opportunity to put things right before you go to the Omb.) If you have a letter saying that it's the company's 'final response' and giving you the Omb. contact details then you can contact the Omb. You can ring for advice and you don't need a lawyer or anyone else to act on your behalf, it's designed to be easy. The website is helpful and you can search for cases like your own www.fos.org.uk. HTH.

Thank you very much for your advice.

The mortgage company said on the letter 'If however you do not have any additional information, yet you continue to remain dissatisfied, you may refer this matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service, but must do so within six months of the date of this letter. I enclose a copy of the leaflet "Your Complaint and the Ombudsman" for your information. (Acutally there was no copy enclosed. He might have forgotten or I couldnt find it in the envelope)

My husband said he would reply to them with more information and say if is not resolved then, he would go to Ombudsman. Is it ok for him to say this to them?

I'm so sorry, I didn't realise you had left another post, I've just seen this now. Yes, it is absolutely fine for your husband to go back to the firm with more information if there is anything new or extra that you can add, they will look at it again. IME (many years of working in FS firms), there is usually a genuine desire for companies to get things right and on the whole they will be very fair and balanced in reaching their decision on a complaint. However they will not uphold a complaint just because you are unhappy with the answer - the company has to have made a genuine error or got something wrong. They need all the information that you have available to help them get to the right answer. There is no advantage to you in having extra info available and holding onto it for the Ombudsman. Remember that if you tell the company everything and they still reject your complaint, you can STILL go to the Ombudsman. It's actually a breach of regulator requirements not to give you the FOS leaflet so it's very careless of them not to include it, make sure you point it out to them when you get back to them. BTW, the 6 months for FOS contact is strictly enforced, so don't hang about once you have the 'final response letter'. HTH and sorry again about the delay.