Reasons Why Not To Make A PPI Claims On Your Own

Recently we were contacted by a client who had submitted their ppi claims by themselves as they had their claim rejected by the provider they had complained about.

The client had also submitted their case to the Financial Ombudsman who has also turned the case down and the client has approached us for help.

Firstly this puts both the client and us in a difficult position as you have a very short period to make your appeal to the Financial Ombudsman and this is one reason you should consider not submitting your ppi claim by yourself.

We had to write to the Financial Ombudsman and ask for an extension of time and for a copy of the file so we could review it. This has to be done very quickly and because of this exposes the risk of error on the client’s part as they are under pressure to give us the answers. Again something that can lead to error and another reason you should not submit your cases by yourself unless you know the policy wording.

Once we received the file from the Ombudsman we had to review the file as a matter of urgency to see what had been previously submitted then speak with the client regarding the policy wording and then identify any areas that had not been covered in the original complaint. As we only charge 15% plus VAT on our cases this causes further problems as we will need to review this as it is not enough for this type of claim and is unfair on our other clients.

People in the press keep telling clients to make their claim by themselves but if they fail and then use the services of a claims management firm who then win are they going to pay the increased charges for the clients? Probably not so they should all stop this type of talk as we are seeing an increase in these types of cases and are going to start publishing stats on what website clients went to before they submitted their unsuccessful claim by themselves.

PPI Claims can sometimes be straight forward we are not saying that you can’t make the claim by yourself but if you do not know the policy wording then in my opinion you should not be making the claim by yourself.

After reviewing this client’s file and discussing the case with the client it became very clear that the client did not understand the policy wording and had missed a critical issue when submitting the claim.

The lesson we all need to learn is if you do not understand the policy do not submit the claim by yourself as you run the risk of losing it.

Another key point to remember is that the business you have complained to will only review the information in your complaint the same as the Ombudsman will and if you miss anything out then you run the risk of losing your complaint.

This case had a critical area that was not included in the original complaint to the provider or to the Ombudsman and this is the reason it was rejected. We have now identified this critical omission and submitted the appeal on time to the Ombudsman and now fully expect the client to be paid out although it is going to take longer to do so as it has went to appeal stage.

The fact is 15% is not excessive so why take the risk of losing your case by doing it by yourself when there is no need to. Don’t take that risk when you are submitting your ppi claims use the services of a claims management company.