2 days before i was due to fly, i found out my holiday company had gone bust. (friday), phone the company and after mny phone calls to majorca, i was told i had to pay the hotel again for my stay, thankfully, the flights had been booked seperatly. But the hotel was going to cost me anpother 270es,
A friend leant me £300 in order so that i had some holiday money to go away with, After 10hours of non stop hassle i eventailly arrived at thehotel nad booked in, paying them 270e out of my 470e holiday money, leaving the £300 in the bank to take out when i needed it, never thought i would need my credit cards.
at midnight on the tuesday eve, while sat in the hotel bar i decided that the following morning i was going ot take the 300 out of the bank as i was misteriously running short on funds.. didnt occrur to me that maybe the cleaning staff might have had a hand in that. Sof about half 11 i appraoched the santander bank in palma nova to take the money out, enetered my pin, card was spat back at me saying that i had already readched my daily limit, tried another atm, same problem, came back to the santander atm and tried again with a lower amount, thinking that as i was abraod maybe the limits were different due to exchange fess.. after a 3rd time with no luck, i phoned tha bank from a payphone, to be told that thre was already a pending transaction on teh account from earlier that day.. i argues with this but was told that was the case. I returned back to the hotel and logged in to my bank accoutn to see for myself, nothing was showing, so after making sure i had logged out of my account i returned to my room and phone the bank AGAIN from my mobile.. (Cue and expensive call) .. after a rather lenghty phone call.. i was eventually transfered to another department who then upped my overdraft so that i could take some money out as i still had 4 days left on my holiday..
i decided to leave taking the money out until the following day hoping that the fraudulent transaction would clear before i took any more out.
so thursday morning i walked to a different bank, and took the money out with no problems. this transaction cleared within the hour.
When i got home i went to the bank and spent numerous hours on the phone to the fraud department who put the money back into the account. at the start of september.
The bank have now TAKEN THE MOINEY OUT of my account (with no notice to me, they say they sent me a letter on the 1st oct to inform me, which to this day i have not received, stating that a valid pin was used and there fore i must have taken the money out. they keep asking me if i kept the pin with the card, which after 12years of banking with hsbc i have NEVER done, to that point i have never even written the damn pin down anywhere)
As i was on my own on holiday, there was no one with me who had access to the card.
The last time i physically used the card before attemptng to take money out of the account was on the saturday before i left the uk.
My problem i have now is that dspite the bank themselves telling me that the fraudulent transaction was taken out at 00:17 on teh 18th.. it didnt clear through my bank account until the 19th which is when i took the 2nd lot of 300es out (after upping my overdraft to do so) for which i am NOt disputing. How do i get the bank to agree that the original transaction for the 18th is fraudulent? is there anyway i can do so? OR as a single mum who can barely afford to loose £20 am i looking at being £254 + out of pocket even tho i didnt take the 1st transaction out?

Any help would be much appreciated as i cant afford to loose this much money….. now the bank are telling me that another investigation will hve to be conducted, and it will take upto another 5weeks to resolve, at which time i still run the risk of not getting my missing money back!!!
Please can anyone help?

But truth is stranger than fiction. Although FOS refused to look at the interest rate (The Ombudsman’s decision is final, no Ombudsman can over-rule another !) they did decide to look at the tax situation which the IA had not asked them to look at and where I was content with the deal I negotiated with the bank myself… and found a mistake which the Principal Ombudsman instructed should be corrected with a cheque from the FOS itself … the bank was not asked to repay the tax it had incorrectly deducted ! (The Ombudsman’s decision is not so final in tax matters it seems ).

The questions of why the Ombudsman missed the tax error in the first place, or why he approved the award as fair and reasonable without considering tax at all (thereby allowing a £4000 tax error to get through), or why the Principal Ombudsman chose to blame the Service Review Team who had nothing to do with the original mistake rather than the Ombudsman who made the decision, all remain unanswered.

Please let us know what happens.

And if the FOS are indeed the paragons of virtue that you proclaim, they could abandon their exemption from the Freedom of Information Act, so that outsiders can get decent statistics of what they do. They should also have a proper independent review of their operations, unlike the somewhat circumscribed one done by Lord Hunt.

Having gone through their complaints process myself and having a relative that works there I can truly say the work they do is excellent and mainly thankless. He has told me of the times they uphold complaints in the favour of the customer – do they get a thankyou? No, just more whinges that the compensation is not enough!!!

Generally if a complaint has merit the bank will seek to resolve it in-house – therefore it stands to reason that a higher percentage of cases passed to the FOS will lose.

They are not there to pay out large sums (I have been told of the silly sums asked for for really minor incidents) but to put right what has gone wrong. People have too high views of their “rights”. The banks fully fund this service making free to these people.

If your case is that good and the FOS has wrongly rejected it – go to court. Its amazing the people who say they have an excellent case but will not put their money where their mouth is!

He has told me some of the things people complain about (generically of course to protect personal information under the DPA) and I was shocked. The customer (not the bank) sets ae DD up wrong which causes the wrong payment to be made, therefore incur charges etc. The bank, as a gesure as it is a long standing customer, offers to refund the charges etc. However that is apparently not enough – the customer wants compensation – WHY? IT WAS THEIR MISTAKE, NOT THE BANKS???

We just, unfortunately, live in a compensation society now where people just want something for nothing. If these timewasters stopped clogging up the system then the truly needy and with merits cases would be looked at quicker – and possibly with more sympathy and less jadedness.

The fact is, a lot of people lie to get “free” monty – and when they are caught out they lie more. I am willing to bet that a fari few of the stories about people losing probably aren’t the truth about what actually happened – however the FOS does not go running to the press with the real truth. Maybe if it started to do so then we would really find out whether these complaints are warranted or not.

The Hunt Review web site has removed the evidence it received from the public and others. My evidence was part of this so I have published it again on my own web site.

If anyone would like to know what really happens when an ordinary person takes a case to the FOS, please take a look at this web site. Sorry its so long.

http://www.financial-ombudsman-problems.co.uk

If anyone would like to know what really happens when an ordinary person takes a case to the FOS, please take a look at this web site. Sorry its so long.