FOS hits out at claims management companies
Wednesday 27th May 2009
Taken from LInk
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has said that fee charging claims management companies are “hampering the process” of how financial complaints are dealt with.
The controversial claims management sector has targeted debtors in recent months, saying that credit card and unsecured debts could be written off due to legal loopholes.
As many financial experts speak out against these firms, the spokeswoman for the FOS has said: “We are concerned that by fixating on a technical legal issue that can only be ruled on in court, these firms are masking the real issues that we can tackle such as whether the consumer should even have been sold that loan in the first place.”
According to the FOS, an independent body resolving disputes, more cases are coming through from consumers facing financial difficulties, who believe that they should never have been sold a mortgage as they had no chance of repaying it.
The total number of complaints involving personal loans and credit cards has soared by over a third in the last year.
Complaints about personal loans increased by 44%, and complaints about credit cards increased by 30% between 2007/08 and 2008/09.
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