Even though you have always been in doubt of what the PPI charges in your statement were all about, you still haven’t got any idea how to go about clarifying the matter and possibly resolve if you never wanted it in the first place.
You’ve heard that thousands of people have been ripped off their money by this insurance policy that was supposed to help them with their repayments in times of prolonged illness, accident, or sudden unemployment. However, how it was applied alongside credit agreements were plainly unacceptable to a great majority of consumers. Luckily, the courts discovered this mis-selling practice and have ruled on requiring banks to make a thorough account review and return all the money paid to PPI.
To date, PPI claims have been flooding the offices of various financial institutions from their customers who were subjected to the wrongful practice of applying PPI to their loans, credit cards, and mortgages. You, on the other hand, could still have the faintest idea how to go about it. Actually, you’ve got two options on this. You can either hire the services of a PPI claims expert or do it yourself through these trouble-free steps.
You need to fist establish how long you have had PPI in your account. A policy certificate will indicate the date it started and when it will expire. The amount paid to it will also be specified. There should also be references to PPI on your statements and credit agreement paperwork. Collect them and make copies to attach to your PPI claim letter.
To start the ball rolling, you need to directly contact the bank that sold you PPI by writing a PPI claim letter. If you’re not adept in making such, hundreds of ready-made letters are available on the Internet for you to download, copy, and print. Making the claim through a letter makes it black and white, giving you and the bank no reason to say in the end that no such claim was made.
You need to establish how the policy was wrongly applied alongside your credit account. There are several ways that it could have been mis-sold to you. The suitability of the product to your financial needs and your eligibility for cover should have been determined even before the sale proceeded. You needed to be at least 18 years of age and not over 65 to avail PPI. You may not also be covered by the policy’s benefits if you had pre-existing medical condition or not employed full time. You were most likely wrongly signed up to the policy if such were not established.
You could also have been automatically signed up to the policy without you having known it. If you applied for credit online, you most likely have missed the opt-out from PPI box in the online form. There’s also that chance that you were forced to buying the product because you were told that it is a condition to the approval of your loan or credit card application. Important details such as costs, cooling-off, expiration, and the likes should not have been deliberately missed when talking about PPI during the sale.
Because there has to be a number of information that your bank will refer to when reviewing your account, expect your PPI claim to be resolved in a few weeks. It still depends on how complex the case and how sufficient the evidence is. Claims are generally resolved within 6 or 8 weeks and your bank should contact you about it when they reached a decision.
If the bank rejects your claim, fails to contact you, or decided on something else that you get to be unsatisfied about, you have the option of taking it up to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Lodge a complaint against your bank to the Ombudsman and let them make further enquiries. You may be contacted to submit additional pieces of information so cooperate with them. Remember, too, that complaints may take longer to be upheld, depending on how cooperative your bank will be and other factors affecting the review.
Nonetheless, if you are certain that a mis-selling of the policy took place do not hesitate to start acting to resolve it. After all, the money you paid to the policy is never a joke. You’d be happy to know the massive amount you can reclaim in refund and in interest that PPI gathered over time if your claim succeeded.