Financial ombudsman help please settle or not?

[Anonymousmember12345]

Name changed!

thanks in advance for reading this.

i have a case with the financial ombudsman, at the moment we are at the pre investigation stage,

I have spent years trying to get the proceeds of an endowment paid out the company repeatedly obstructed this. After becoming particularly frustrated I mentioned I was complaining to the financial ombudsman and they suddenly sent me the proceeds of the endowment plus a small amount of interest plus £500 apology with a letter saying they were completely at fault and would provide their staff with retraining etc etc.

By that stage I had complained to the ombudsman who has written to say they spoke to the company who have offered another 1k as interest do I want to accept and consider it closed?

I can’t decide and would really appreciate others views (my understanding is FO calculates interest at 8% the company calculated it at 1% above base which for a lot of the time was under 1% so we would mainly be disagreeing about the interest and the size of the apology sum.)

I think (as do the rest of my family that I have told) that the company concerned was intentionally being obstructive. I have their letter saying we were completely at fault, we failed you etc etc.

Does anyone have any experience of these investigations? Is it arduous for me? Is a £500 pay out the kind of size apology I should expect?

thanks

I would make a counter offer for them to pay you the 8% interest plus £1000 as an apology. The worst that they can do is say no and then you can proceed to the ombudsman.

@MotherofPufflings thank you for replying, it is already with the ombudsman they’ve asked me if I wish to accept or want toe investigation to proceed.

i feel bad making the FO do work when there company has already admitted fault but as my daughter said they’ve refused to pay for years then tried to cheat me at least twice when they offered a settlement. She thinks I should go ahead. Hence I was wondering how arduous it all is for me and so on.

Similar situation with a leading company. I decided to take it despite part of the issue being resolved. I really want it to be logged formally that they lied and delayed and only admitted liability when I took a data access request. I have also asked to speak to
someone very senior as part of my Claim

Thanks the speed with which they made an offer as soon as I said ombudsman makes me lean towards proceeding too.
My daughter made that point as well.