The Shabby Habit

The Shabby Habit

Abbey, the mortgage lender, has been fined £800K by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for mishandling complaints from its customers over endowment policies.

The FSA also accused Abbey of giving it inaccurate information, while failing to treat its customers fairly.

The FSA said Abbey mishandled about 5,000 complaints between October 2001 and September 2003.

Seemingly Abbey rejected 3,500 complaints that should have in fact been upheld.

The FSA are quoted as saying:

"By putting its own interests ahead of those of its customers with a mortgage endowment complaint, Abbey has singularly failed to treat its customers fairly,"

Abbey said it accepted that its complaint procedures for endowment products were inadequate, and said it was reviewing all complaints from the period and would pay compensation where appropriate.

Quote:

"Abbey takes this extremely seriously and continues to fully review its complaints handling policies and procedures,".

Abbey said it was re-evaluating about 50,000 complaints made over the past five years, and would be writing to the customers affected by 22 June.

So there you have a nice example of a leading brand name, not treating its customers fairly.

I wonder how many others have acted in the same way?