Not long after I first started this blog, I wrote about a complaint I had made to Payday Express. After 18 months I had not heard a thing from Payday Express so I decided to make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman in November last year.

I felt that the actions taken by Payday Express were not fair and that they should have acted better towards me. I gathered all the information I had and filled in a form to send to the Financial Ombudsman. I waited to see what they made of the situation.

What is the Status of the complaint?

The full response from the Final Ombudsman was that they could not uphold my complaint which was disappointing to me. However I had missed off a crucial bit of information which was the repayment plan I had attempted to set up with Payday Express. To summarise Payday Express emptied out my bank account taking me overdrawn and that resulted in my Co-operative Bank  account being closed and defaulted. Two defaults for the price of one if you like.

Payday Express used something called Continuous Payment Authority which is how the payment got through. Unfortunately I did not have enough money in the account so it ended up massively overdrawn. The Co-operative Bank quite rightly asked me to pay back what was owed immediately but at the time it wasn’t possible.

Sending the missing information to the Financial Ombudsman

I sent the missing information to the Financial Ombudsman back in January, yes January this year and heard nothing from them. I chased and chased and apparently the complaint had been closed automatically at the end of January but they didn’t know why. Naturally I was not too pleased so I asked why the information I had supplied wasn’t reviewed. I was told in light of this that the complaint would be examined once more and someone would get back to me. I was assured that this isn’t how the Financial Ombudsman usually operates.

A few more months passed by and I heard nothing. I received e-mails from the Financial Ombudsman promising me that someone would look into the complaint but still I heard nothing. I chased again and was told once more someone would be in touch. Sadly I have heard nothing.

The Final Attempt to get the matter resolved

Tonight I have sent another e-mail asking for my case to be assigned to someone else in the hope this matter can be brought to a close. If I don’t hear anything I will simply leave it as it is now. Instead I shall report what happened to the Office of Fair Trading to make them aware of what went on.

Let’s hope they do respond. As always I will keep you all updated on what the outcome of this is. Promise.

Your Experiences

Has anyone else experienced this with the Financial Ombudsman? Please share your story in the comments box below.