The Bank of Scotland has the dubious distinction of having received the most complaints from its customers regarding mortgages and home finance, according to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), an article on mortgagesolutions-online.com has reported. The FOS received 563 complaints about the bank in the first six months of this year, with 40 per cent of these complaints being upheld.
The trade body?s inaugural publication of complaints relating to individual financial businesses between 1 January and 30 June 2009 also revealed that Barclays came second, receiving 371 complaints, but with a higher proportion of complaints being upheld at 55 per cent. Abbey had the third highest complaint count with 299, with around 52 per cent of them being upheld.
Other banks that had high number of complaints were Nationwide with 191 complaints of which 28 per cent were upheld, Cheltenham & Gloucester receiving 159 complaints with 42 per cent upheld, Alliance & Leicester receiving complaints with 39 per cent upheld, and Northern Rock receiving 108 complaints with 31 per cent upheld.
The lenders with the most complaints upheld were GMAC-RFC, which had 75 per cent of its 53 complaints upheld and GE Money Home Lending, which had 60 per cent of its 47 complaints upheld.
Walter Merricks, chief ombudsman at FOS, said: ?The complaints data we are publishing for the first time today will help people to see how the financial businesses that are responsible for nine tenths of the ombudsman?s workload deal with customer complaints.? Mr Merricks hoped that encouragement would be given to those whose performances were seen as poor based on the information available, and that they would improve. ?This should mean fewer of their customers having to bring unresolved complaints to the ombudsman,? he said.
