As part of the effort by the Financial Services Authority to ensure banks take full responsibility for their part in the PPI mis-selling scandal, lenders are now required to write to all of their customers that may have been affected to let them know they could be the victims of mis-selling. Very shortly, 12 million letters from the UK’s lenders will plop onto the doormats of an unsuspecting public and explain how individuals could have been mis-sold PPI and how to make a PPI reclaim.
And one of those members of the unsuspecting public could be you.
You might be sitting there thinking “How daft. I’ve never had a PPI policy.” Well, actually you may have and not known. Hiding a PPI policy by bundling the costs in together with a loan or credit card interest repayment and not saying anything was just one of a myriad of ways lenders were mis-selling PPI. In fact, when investigated some victims found the unknown polices had added huge sums of money onto their repayments every month, for policies that on the open market should have cost little more than the price of a luxury coffee. Suddenly lenders were admitting acting immorally and victims were receiving thousands of pounds of their money refunded plus compensation.
But why should you ‘jump on the bandwagon’ and make a PPI refund? Here are 10 reasons why you need to think seriously about finding out whether you have been a victim of PPI mis-selling and take steps to make a PPI reclaim.
1. The banks may have taken your money without your permission – in some circles depriving someone of their money by lying to them is called fraud or money by deception, but in banking circles it’s called mis-selling. Bottom line, if the banks did not give you all the information you needed to make a decision about PPI, or told you it was mandatory to have it with a certain financial product, or hid it with something else so you didn’t know it was there or did any number of other unethical things to get their hands on your cash, you need to get it back. It belongs to you, not them
2. Under law you are entitled to reclaim if something is not fit for purpose – that is if you were charged for a something you didn’t actually want, need or were not able to use, you are entitled to get your money back through a PPI reclaim. With financial products, it is vital that they are considered in the context of your own personal circumstances and not just sold to anyone who happens to cross a salesperson’s path.
3. You have been left financially disadvantaged – if you have had money taken for an unsuitable product over a long period of time, such as through a loan or a credit card balance, you may have been thousands of pounds worse off. You may even have had to make your payments for many months longer than you had to. What could you have done with that money if your lender had not taken it?
4. You will receive interest and compensation – all lenders are required to give compensation to customers who prove they have been mis-sold PPI, but did you know that in addition to the refund of your policies and compensation you also receive interest on the refund part? Your lender is likely to have charged you interest your loan or credit card balances, which will have included the PPI payment, so the FSA insisted the interest must be returned.
5. It only takes a little time or a little free help to check – there’s a wealth of information on this site and forums about the kind of tactics that a lender could have employed to catch you out. In a very short space of time, you could find out you have been taken advantage of and are entitled to put in for a PPI refund. Alternatively, give one of our advisers a call and they’ll walk you through the process and help you find out if you have a case for a PPI reclaim.
Not everyone does, but until you check you’ll never know whether you do.