HI Caggers! I need your help with this!
November last year, I had received my initial FOS assessment in my favour about PPI complaint registered against Barclays.
On 18th of February 2013, I received another letter from FOS informing me that Barclays contested the decision for the reasons below:
please find letter sent by Barclays to FOS.
i never had anyone either on phone or face to face who explained to me anything about the PPI policy.
it came through the post & i signed it off to them.
Dear Sirs
We refer to your assessment in relation to Mr xxxx complaint concerning the sale of payment protection insurance (PPI).
Please accept our apologies for the the length of time it has taken to respond to your letter.
My understand of your assessment is that you believe the complaint should be upheld
because you feel that reviewing the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) policy element
of their Barclaycard is not clear from the evidence available that the policy was optional.
We have reviewed the complaint relating to the purchase of their PPI policy
and have identified that their application form was completed over the telephone with one of our advisors.
We believe that our evidence suggest that the optional nature of the policy was made clear to the customer.
We have set out below our reason for this, using both our generic evidence and where applicable customer specific evidence.
Sales Process Evidence
We note that the Payment Protection Insurance was sold 2003 over the telephone.
Attached is a copy of our telephone sales script and attach this in appendix 1.
We note the following from this script which indicates the optional nature of the policy:
· The customer was required to give positive or negative response when asked if they would like to take out PPL policy;
· Following positive selection, we in addition make the customer aware of their right to cancel within the first 30 days without obligation;
· Even following a positive response the customer is requested to reconfirm their decision;4
· We also note that at no point customer is informed that the policy is obligatory in order to take a Barclaycard.
Following positive selection for PPL, a pre-populated Application Form will be sent to the customer following the conversation.
We attach in Appendix 2, 3 copies of Application Forms use during this period.
We will have sent our original submission a copy of the application form if we hold on file,
howeverdue to age of sale, we may not retain copies.
The Application Forms are per-populated for convince the customer’s decision.
Sections required, then there was further opportunity for it to declined at this stage.
In this instance, acceptance was confirmed by signing and returning this documentation to Barclays.
The customer would then the application form to the insurer’s, who would review it and if the application was accepted would forward a certificate of insurance to the customer.
The certificate of insurance confirms the full terms and conditions of the cover,
including all exclusions and highlighting the right to cancel cover within the first 30 days without obligations.
As a result of the sales script used, the process following the initial sales call,
and the fact that the customer’s recollection of the complaint does not indicate his script was not used,
we believe this is sufficient evidence to demonstrate the optionality of cover.
Customer Specific Evidence in addition,
we note from our investigation,
that the customer has not provided any evidence or any testimony that indicates the customer was unaware optionality of the policy.
Conclusion
In summary, given the above, we do not agree with your assessment of this complaint
and would ask that the point raised is considered. We await response In due course.
Thank you in advance for helping me with this