NEWS...
Debt Collection Complaints up 71%
Complaints concerning debt collection went up 71% last year, according to figures published by the FOS.
They received some 697 debt collection related complaints between April 2009 and March 2010. However, this was still considerably lower than other areas of the sector, such as unsecured loans, which generated 6,284 complaints.
Complaints included customers being pressed for higher repayments than they could afford, cases of mistaken identity and collectors not pursuing debt in a reasonable manner.
The headline grabbing figure showed a 'three fold increase in complaints about fee-charging debt management firms'- from 80 to 231. However, it is vital to put these in context of 20 million successful and complaint-free cases in the same time period.
The data also showed credit card related complaints totalled 18,396 – 1% down on last year – while mortgage complaints weighed in at 7,469 – down 1.7%.
Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of FOS added: "We ended the financial year having received 163,012 new cases, 9% more than forecast and 28% higher than the previous year's record number.
"This is the highest number of new cases we have received in our ten-year history."
