Consumers deterred from making claims themselves
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Some claims management firms are discouraging consumers from claiming back excessive bank charges or mis-sold payment protection insurance by themselves, an undercover investigation by Which? has revealed.
In August the consumer body called 38 claims management companies posing as potential customers and 12 of the firms implied the callers would be better off using their firm rather than claiming independently, even though an independent claim costs nothing.
A further 16 firms professed to have successfully claimed back money in 90% or more of cases without properly qualifying this, while five could not say how they were regulated.
Comments included “You can make the claim yourself but you will have to wait till maybe next year…we can do it straight away”.
Martyn Hocking, editor of Which? magazine, says: “Claims management firms have ways to encourage consumers to use them, from exaggerating their success rates to suggesting they’d be more successful at getting your money back than if you did it yourself.
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