Jessica nets Telegraph readers' £780,000 in 2009

Published: 12:13PM GMT 31 Dec 2009

Readers who were unhappy with the service provided by banks, building
societies and other financial institutions gained a total of £782,526 after
complaining to The Daily Telegraph last year.

Painstaking investigation of each individual case paid off with another bumper
year for the Jessica Investigates and Ask Jessica columns. And our headline
total of refunds, retrievals, debts written off and money raised only
includes those cases where grateful readers or the institutions involved
informed us of the outcome.

Our tally also excludes payouts of more than £1m by National Savings &
Investments which had been offsetting the fall in the Retail Prices Index
(RPI) against a guaranteed fixed rate of interest. More than 15,000 people
who had sold the index-linked savings certificates at issue between
anniversaries received rebates averaging £68. But other newspapers became
involved in that campaign before it reached fruition so we cannot claim full
credit for that victory.

By contrast, SF of Colchester's subsidence problem had been rumbling on for 11
years when she approached me two years before the matter was finally
resolved. Until then, the loss adjuster had not considered that the insurer
for this Britannia Building Society policy should be asked to finance the
necessary underpinning. However, following my talks with the building
society, site monitoring and other meetings took place that led to the
underpinning work being agreed after all. This culminated in Britannia
paying for work that cost £73,500. SF said she could finally move on.

A blunder by Legal & General over a payment in respect of a joint life
insurance policy with terminal illness cover put PD, of Lincs, through
emotional agony. About five months after paying out a claim in full, the
insurer had second thoughts and demanded repayment of half the money –
nearly £30,000. PD had been married to the deceased for 23 years and has
three children. But his entire estate had been left to his new wife of one
year. A solicitor was instructed to recover the money. The Financial
Ombudsman Service advised PD to have the matter dealt with by a court. PD's
own solicitor could not resolve it. My intervention then led to Legal &
General rescinding its demand for the £29,987.

The appalling treatment dealt out by what was then HBOS to LM, of West
Midlands, whose husband had died, aged 53, leaving her with a nine-year-old
daughter and a 16-year-old son was the case about which I received the most
feedback. On going through paperwork, LM had come across details for a
personal loan taken out to buy a car with Bank of Scotland. She told the
bank of her husband's death, sent a death certificate and said she would
raise what she could from selling the vehicle and then pay the proceeds to
the lender.

Meanwhile, agents of the bank harassed LM with visits and phone calls. Once,
after her son had explained that his father had died, the teenager was told "can
you ask him to call when he gets back?"

The bank asserted that LM had signed the loan agreement which, it was adamant,
was in joint names. Therefore, it claimed the remaining £6,910 debt was her
responsibility. LM does not drive a car and knew she had not signed such an
agreement and had not even known about it. Eventually, the car was sold for
£2,600 to which LM decided to add £200 for the bank for goodwill. I
eventually prised a copy of the loan agreement out of the bank. It revealed
LM's late husband had never put her down as a joint borrower. Nor had LM
signed the contract. My intervention improved LM's position by £5,310, but
left a sour taste.

Then there were cases where money that was due failed to materialise. MM,
of Northwood, suffered a worrying few weeks concerning £113,258 from a
Barclays Nest Egg account.

Early in the year I reported how Birmingham Midshires failed to release £9,080
which was urgently needed from PR of Sidmouth's late husband's index-linked
account. Having been told categorically there were no special provisions for
interest should an investor die before the end of this product's term, I
pressed for the terms and conditions. These revealed that Birmingham
Midshires had given me wrong information. Interest was due after all and was
at last paid along with compensation, bringing the full sum to £10,802.

Although mis-selling claims have been on the wane, there were still a few.
These included that of DG, of Buxton, whose position was improved by £8,843
after Abbey agreed that it had been wrong, given her circumstances, to
advise her to buy a with-profits bond when she was 80 years old.

Halifax, now part of Lloyds Banking Group, reversed an earlier decision
against JC, of Chichester. In this case, the £25,000 invested had
represented half the elderly couple's capital. It now made up the £9,148
difference between what there would have been had the money stayed in a
high-yielding deposit account and what the poor-performing investment
actually realised.

Across the financial services industry as a whole, readers tell me there has
been a decline in basic courtesy to customers. If those dealing with the
public would be polite and not so slow to apologise and have the grace to do
what they say they are going to do, rather than omitting to carry out tasks
they have given their word they will undertake, then, however grey the
larger financial picture, individual customers would be a great deal
happier.

Surely these purveyors of bad manners are customers themselves in their own
lives? Is it too much to ask that, during the coming year, they put
themselves in the shoes of those they are supposed to be serving?

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