The power to settle financial complaints.
The power to settle financial complaints.
This section answers a number of frequently-asked questions (FAQs) about:
how long will the ombudsman service take to consider and resolve my complaint?
We look at each case carefully – and the time it takes varies significantly. It can depend on:
This means we can sort out some complaints within just a few months. But some can take over a year.
How we allocate and prioritise cases can also be affected by the number and type of complaints that consumers refer to us.
We publish detailed figures showing how long it takes us to resolve complaints each year in our annual review (in the section, "how we dealt with the complaints").
Like the courts, the ombudsman service is entirely impartial. We are also open about our work. We publish complaints statistics about the proportion of cases we uphold, so that everyone can see the outcome of complaints following our involvement.
We send our consumer factsheet to consumers who bring complaints to us, explaining in brief how our complaints-handling process works: