“Buried” in 92 Pages: FOS Failed to Investigate the Complaint, Then Refused to Admit It

There is a basic expectation of the Financial Ombudsman Service, that before reaching a view on a complaint, it should read the complaint, understand the issues and consider the evidence. That is not an ambitious service standard or an unreasonable demand from a dissatisfied representative, rather a foundation of the job.

FOS’ own description of its process says that, before providing an initial assessment, its case handler will review what both sides have said and the paperwork supplied. Against that published commitment, what happened in one of our GAP insurance complaints is indefensible.

The investigator considered a serious signature discrepancy that emerged after the original complaint had been submitted to the dealership, while failing to investigate the original complaint points. When we challenged that failure, a line manager suggested that the complaint was “buried” within the evidence bundle.

The bundle was just 92 pages long. More importantly however, the manager’s own response demonstrated that he had located the complaint points the investigator had missed.

FOS nevertheless refused to apologise for the oversight or withdraw the initial view, but agreed to investigate the points that should already have been considered and passed the case onot a new investigator.

This is another damning example of a service that is failing at its most basic function and then protecting itself from the consequences, and once again calls into question the standard of recruitment within the much maligned service.

The signature discrepancy was an additional concern, not a replacement complaint

The chronology matters because it exposes the fundamental flaw in the investigation.

Our client’s GAP insurance complaint had already been submitted to the dealership before the signature issue arose. The original grounds therefore existed independently of that later concern and remained part of the complaint requiring investigation.

The subsequent signature discrepancy was serious. It raised questions about the authenticity of the paperwork and the possibility of fraud. It plainly warranted bringing to the attention of FOS.

What it did not do however, was to erase the original complaint.

Yet the investigator’s assessment considered only that later issue, leaving the original grounds completely unaddressed or even referred to. A concern that should have been added to the investigation effectively became the investigation.

The existence of a serious additional issue is not permission to ignore the complaint that brought the consumer to FOS in the first place.

Whatever conclusion an investigator reaches about the authenticity of a signature, that conclusion cannot, by itself, resolve separate allegations that have not been examined. Nor should a consumer have to resubmit existing complaint points simply because attention has shifted to something discovered later.

The task was to understand the whole complaint. FOS simpy failed to do that.

A 92-page bundle is not an excuse for missing the complaint

When we raised a service complaint, line manager James Smith responded by suggesting that the original complaint points were “buried” within the evidence bundle.

That extraordinary description deserves scrutiny.

We were not asking FOS to reconstruct an unspoken grievance from unrelated correspondence. The complaint and the dealership’s response were within the material supplied for the investigation. Those documents were central to understanding what the dispute was about.

Describing them as “buried” shifts attention away from the investigator’s failure to identify the issues and towards the supposed inconvenience of having to read the evidence.

The bundle contained just 92 pages, and we do not accept that this provided a credible excuse for overlooking the complaint itself. More fundamentally, the obligation to understand the dispute cannot depend on whether its central documents happen to appear near the front of a bundle.

A complaint document does not become irrelevant because other evidence precedes it.

If an investigator is genuinely uncertain about which issues remain in dispute, the obvious course is to seek clarification before issuing an assessment. That would be a reasonable part of an investigation. Proceeding without addressing the original grounds, then blaming their position in the paperwork, is not.

The complaint was not absent from the evidence, but was absent from the investigation.

James Smith’s own response undermined the excuse

The most revealing feature of James Smith’s response was that he had found the complaint points.

His response therefore demonstrated that the material was readily available and capable of being identified. That substantially undermines any suggestion that the investigator’s omission could simply be attributed to the way the bundle had been assembled.

The appropriate managerial response should have been straightforward… identify what had been missed, acknowledge the incomplete investigation, apologise and explain how the failure would be corrected.

Instead, James’ response sought to explain away the omission while arranging for the omitted work to be undertaken.

In our opinion, that is colleague protection dressed up as service-complaint handling.

The practical effect was to minimise the investigator’s failure rather than confront it, while leaving us to press for an investigation of matters that were already before the service.

We regard this as an institutional whitewash of an identifiable service failure. That judgment is based on the response itself, because the complaint points were located, their investigation was agreed, a new investigator was appointed, but responsibility for having overlooked them was not accepted.

An organisation reveals its standards not merely through the mistakes its staff make, but through what its managers are prepared to defend.

Here, the managerial response turned an investigative failure into a much wider question about accountability.

Agreeing to do the missing work does not erase the failure

FOS has agreed to investigate the original complaint points. That is necessary, but it does not retrospectively make the initial investigation adequate.

There is a distinction between correcting an omission and pretending that the omission does not warrant criticism. A service can agree to carry out additional work while still failing to take responsibility for why that work was not done when it should have been.

We asked FOS to acknowledge the oversight, apologise and withdraw the initial view. It refused to apologise or withdraw that view, while agreeing to investigate the actual complaint points.

Our position is that an assessment which failed to address the original complaint should be withdrawn and replaced after a complete investigation. At the very least, FOS should openly acknowledge its limitations rather than defend the service provided.

The consumer should not be left with the impression that an existing view represents a proper assessment of the whole complaint when significant parts of that complaint still require investigation.

Doing the job after a service complaint is not evidence that the job was done properly before it.

This is not dissatisfaction with an outcome

It is important to be clear about what we are criticising, as the outcome has not yet been provided.

We are challenging the failure to investigate the complaint that was actually referred, and the defence of that failure by FOS itself.

Before there can be a meaningful disagreement about the merits of a complaint, the relevant grounds need to have been identified and considered.

An investigator may examine an argument and reject it with reasons. That is an assessment which can be scrutinised and challenged. An investigator who does not address the argument at all has not performed the same task.

It is no answer to tell the consumer that further investigation can now take place without acknowledging that the original investigation was incomplete. Otherwise, the service-complaint process becomes a means of quietly repairing defective work while refusing to recognise the defect.

That approach can only be considered as damage control in our opinion, something that both the FCA and FOS has become accustomed to.

What protection is there for the consumer who does not challenge it?

We identified the missing issues and challenged the investigator’s handling. The more troubling question is what might happen when a consumer does not recognise the omission or does not feel able to contest it.

FOS presents its service as free and accessible, and consumers are told that they do not need professional representation to use it. That makes competent investigation even more important.

A consumer should not need specialist knowledge to check whether an investigator has understood the scope of their complaint. Nor should they need the confidence to challenge a manager who attributes an omission to material being “buried” in the evidence.

The risk is obvious. A person may mistake an assessment of one issue for an assessment of their whole complaint. They may accept the investigator’s reasoning without appreciating that other grounds remain unanswered, or abandon the matter because they assume the relevant evidence has been considered.

We cannot say how often this happens, but this case exposes a failure capable of producing precisely that result, and FOS should be concerned enough to investigate it rather than explain it away.

FOS says that it carries out quality checks against organisational standards and uses the results to identify improvements. Based upon James Smith’s response we have no confident that the quality checks in place are in any way adequate.

A quality framework has little value if a demonstrated failure is met with defensiveness.

Disband FOS and replace it with genuine accountability

In our opinion, this episode illustrates why minor procedural adjustments are not enough.

The initial failure was serious but capable of being addressed honestly. An investigator had not considered the original complaint points. A manager could have acknowledged that, apologised, corrected the position and treated the case as an opportunity to improve standards.

Instead, we received an excuse about where the complaint appeared in the bundle, a refusal to apologise, a refusal to withdraw the initial view, but an agreement to undertake the investigation that should already have happened with a new investigator appointed to the case.

That response is why we see a serious cultural problem, not merely an individual oversight.

A body entrusted with scrutinising the conduct of financial businesses should be especially willing to scrutinise its own. It should not demand persistence from consumers before providing a complete investigation, and then demand further persistence before acknowledging that anything went wrong.

Our position is that FOS should be disbanded and replaced by a service built around competent, fair and consistent investigation, transparent reasoning and meaningful accountability.

The purpose must be to protect consumers’ access to justice, not to preserve an institution’s reputation at their expense.

FOS’s most basic responsibility was to read and understand this complaint. It failed. When the omission was exposed, its response gave us more reason to question its culture, not less.

Calling the complaint “buried” does not change where responsibility lies.

The complaint was supplied, as was the evidence. FOS was simply supposed to read, understand and investigate diligently. It failed.