Creation Financial Services bashing

[Lady London]

How about
“what commuoication(s) have taken place from FOS to Creation [proper card issuing name] since 1st January 2021?”

“How many complaints have been received about Creation as provider of [proper card mame] since 1st January 2021? How many of those complaints are closed? How many of those complaints have an adviser allocated?”.

I am not sure if we can ask about how many communications from Creation to FOS or just from FOS to Creation

• This reply was modified 54 years, 3 months ago by .

[Lady London]

@Luca M just a guess at a time point Creation could have in mind.

French companies tend to work in calendar years.
And it’s hard to imagine that Creation would expect to get away with failing to respond to the FOS for 2 whole years. To behave so badly surely means they think they are out of the UK regulatory framework sooner than later?

TBH I’m seriously concerned about the integrity of UK consumer-related financial regulation with this nehaviour from Creation facing FOS enquiries being allowed by FOS. I’m aware of recent months’ reorganisations etc by FOS. But their incompetence seems to have escalated not declined.

[StillintheSun]

The FOS is a creature of statute, i.e. created by Parliament. If you are unhappy with the service write a short email/letter to your local MP and/or the chair of the relevant House of Commons select committee (Finance?).

Of course it is likely that absolutely nothing will happen but it’s worth creating a little background noise about FOS delay and indulgence. If FOS think their ultimate bosses are getting twitchy they may up their game down the line.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 3 months ago by .

[JDB]

Lady London wrote:

@Luca M just a guess at a time point Creation could have in mind.

French companies tend to work in calendar years.
And it’s hard to imagine that Creation would expect to get away with failing to respond to the FOS for 2 whole years. To behave so badly surely means they think they are out of the UK regulatory framework sooner than later?

TBH I’m seriously concerned about the integrity of UK consumer-related financial regulation with this nehaviour from Creation facing FOS enquiries being allowed by FOS. I’m aware of recent months’ reorganisations etc by FOS. But their incompetence seems to have escalated not declined.

I can’t understand who you keep repeating this scaremongering idea of BNP shutting up shop and running away. Even if they did, which is inconceivable, they can’t shed their liabilities as you suggest. They could close or sell Creation but all their regulatory and contractual obligations will remain.

BNP has been in the UK for 150 years and employs over 9,000 people here. Within the industry, they would be considered to be at the higher end of probity. They have also considerably increased their presence in the consumer market with the acquisition of Strutt & Parker.

In respect of the FOS, they can’t really complain that companies don’t respond in a timely way when they themselves are hugely understaffed, new recruits often quite low calibre and inexperienced (sadly something being seen across many sectors) so are very slow. The FOS is also seeing a huge increase in cases, many of which are beyond frivolous, but they still have to deal with them as required by statute. One recent published Creation decision involved the sum of £1.96, complainant disagreed with the initial decision so escalated to an Ombudsman; hours and costs wasted. There are dozens of cases like this which are just gluing up the system.

P.S. quite a lot of (non French) companies work in calendar years.

[points_worrier]

@JDB there is no way that £1.96 case ‘cost’ the FOS the £750 fee for the case, so they made a profit on it. At £750 per case I don’t know why they just don’t hire more investigators. A good profit to be made.

[Lady London]

@JDB I don’t understand it either.

It’s so inconceivable that a company of the level of BNP,or at least a subsidiary of BNP, could behave as they have. And then fail to communicate with the FOS.

So the only conclusion I can draw is that to behave so badly, issue nonsense, disorganised responses to official complaints to cardholders, or no response at all, and then to cap it all by failing to respond to the FOS, Creation must think it has another exit. The only exit I can think of would be exiting the UK. Closing just the card business would presumably not be an escape while Creation still has other businesses in the consumer finance area in the UK.

Otherwise it’s just not logical for Creation to behave as they do. Though perhaps they’re thinking they’ll get away with it because this sort of poor behaviour towards consumers might be more do-able in France.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 3 months ago by .

[JDB]

@Lady London – Creation is far from unique in the attributes you mention – it is unfortunately quite standard and at least one of the high street banks is far, far worse in response times, bad complaints handling etc. It has nothing to do with any sort of exit; they have limited resources and have decided to fight certain cases. Creation will lose some of those cases and win others.

[Froggee]

@JDB I’d highlight that any business that rejects a complaint for £1.96 is nuts. It clearly isn’t being driven by profits and has some other weird agenda going on which, in Creation’s case, appears to be blanket attempt at retribution against unprofitable customers.

I’m sure that you would argue that they need to treat all customers fairly and therefore having taken a decision not to award a contractual benefit of a credit card during the notice period they need to consistently enforce this for all customers.

I get this argument but it means they have backed themselves into a corner. And whilst £1.96 is clearly not worth claiming for the monetary value, it is very much worth claiming to stop companies like Creation behaving poorly when they suddenly woke up to the fact that they were being rinsed for years.

Quite simply, a few senior people in Solihull should fall on their swords for having management systems that were so poor that this went on for so long and the company should move on. Instead it is digging its heels in on a position that many reasonable people here feel is beyond unreasonable.

Each £1.96 claim adds pressure onto Creation and the FOS to resolve this. I would never encourage frivolous claims but if the £1.96 claim is legitimate then why should a customer roll over and let Creation take the proverbial?

[Luca M]

JDB wrote:

@Lady London – Creation is far from unique in the attributes you mention – it is unfortunately quite standard and at least one of the high street banks is far, far worse in response times, bad complaints handling etc. It has nothing to do with any sort of exit; they have limited resources and have decided to fight certain cases. Creation will lose some of those cases and win others.

This! As many companies during/post Covid they do not have enough resources, and as it happens that they have virtually decided to exit the Credit Card business all together, it is unlikely that they will resource it further, especially as FOS has obviously being very flexible on response time, they will not incur extra cost by being slow, at least on the face of it.

What about Heathrow airport in terms of an organisation under government scrutiny that have completely messed up and now finding excuses? They have stated to only have 70% capacity because of resources and thus come up with an arbitrary cap of 100,000 passenger per day as the maximum they can cope with. Emirates Airlines has been the one calling them out as they demonstrated that pre covid average passenger per day were about 280,000, making their 70% capacity /100,000 ppd, a complete made up number and now the Government has officially asked for a full explanation of the situation and how they have come up with 100k capacity..

[JDB]

@Luca M re LHR – a) Emirates has capitulated and will comply with the rules; their comments were a cover for the pax they will cancel and b) you have taken the 200k pax per day error from the Emirates press release – that is arrivals AND departures whereas the 100k cap is for departures only.

The govt and CAA have to be seen to make a fuss, but understand the realities. HAL is fully staffed. It’s so easy to criticise, but best to analyse the facts first.

[JDB]

@Froggee I did wonder if you would respond re Mrs £1.96 as I recall a few weeks ago you asked the HfP community (excluding me) whether it was petty to complain re $2.70. Everyone was terribly polite or silent and I complied with your wishes. I hope you knew the answer before asking the question.

In respect of whether Creation should have pursued it, on your analysis they should not pursue any case under £750 + costs and just pay up because that is economically the cheapest answer. They can’t because there is a limit to what gestures of goodwill (ie writing off money) can cover before having to offer the same to all customers and it is just wrong.

HMRC’s Litigation and Settlement Strategy similarly compels them to collect small amounts of tax, whatever the cost, if they believe the tax is lawfully due. That is considered overall to be fair and in the best interest of all taxpayers.

I help a number of people with FOS cases in a private, unremunerated capacity but I will only help for cases that are meaningful to the person and ones that have a good prospect of success.

[Rui N.]

Luca M wrote:

Emirates Airlines has been the one calling them out as they demonstrated that pre covid average passenger per day were about 280,000, making their 70% capacity /100,000 ppd, a complete made up number and now the Government has officially asked for a full explanation of the situation and how they have come up with 100k capacity..

The made up number was the one from Emirates. Well, not made up, just plain wrong. 100k are departures only, 280k are departures and arrivals. Apples and oranges and all of that.

[JDB]

Rui N. wrote:

Luca M wrote:

Emirates Airlines has been the one calling them out as they demonstrated that pre covid average passenger per day were about 280,000, making their 70% capacity /100,000 ppd, a complete made up number and now the Government has officially asked for a full explanation of the situation and how they have come up with 100k capacity..

The made up number was the one from Emirates. Well, not made up, just plain wrong. 100k are departures only, 280k are departures and arrivals. Apples and oranges and all of that.

The wholly incorrect figure from the Emirates press release was 219k – not sure where @Luca M got the 280k number from.

[Froggee]

@JDB you do make me smile. Always honest, unfailingly polite. I’m glad you’ve got that off your chest. I’m pretty sure if you worked in Creation’s complaints department then the reply to my complaint would have beautifully said “we are sorry we messed up” and you might even have seen fit to award a very nominal sum for the inconvenience of issuing me a credit card and then cancelling it a week later after I’d used it. I would have been happy with sorry. But obviously Creation don’t say sorry. It gives me something to do though.

It’s a shame you don’t do a sideline in CEDR/MCOL as I’m 99% sure that BA will tell me to get stuffed on my £1,400 re-routing expense claim when they cancelled my direct flight to Jersey at the airport and had the genius suggestion of sticking us on an overnight bus to Heathrow Airport from Edinburgh as an alternative where once there, if we were lucky they might then fly us to Jersey.

Once they have rejected this claim I could probably s75 it from Amex, definitely reclaim it on travel insurance, but instead I’ll be banging my head against a brick wall and pursuing BA further. Because it is the right thing to do. I don’t think I’ll claim anything else on travel insurance as I can’t face the hassle (I think I could get £400 from HSBC for delayed departure and possibly more for a lost night’s accommodation).

But that $2.70 from Creation is very important to me. 😀

[Luca M]

I did not cross check my figure but the press release talked about average bases on Yearly volume, which in turn suggest that at peak times (read British holidays) the volume would have been higher and considerably, then average, so capping July and August at 100,000 passenger cannot be right.. and I and I am sure many others on this board, have been flying considerably from Heathrow in the last year and issue with staffing have been consistent throughout even outside of peak dates.. they simply did not plan their recovery properly as well as being optimistic that they could use Covid to lay out staff on good pay packages to recruit them back later at lower terms, which has backfired big time.

[SteveJ]

Overall what’s the consensus here? Given that FOS have failed to deal with this timely, is MCOL a better route?

Maybe a FOI request along the lines suggested by LL first, and submit that with the MCOL to explain that FOS have proven ineffective, hence why outcomes of that route have not been awaited?

[Lady London]

@SteveJ there was a good discussion of MCOL vs FOS earlier in this thread. I’d aay 1/3rd to 1/2 way. As you’ll recall the thread was repaged in some of the early-ish website changes.

If you google, from google not the site search, ‘ site: headforpoints.com “bashing” “MCOL” ‘ you’ll probably find the cluster of posts.

@JDB gave a lot of good info, and I think @memesweeper made a post towards the end of the post cluster on this.

If just “bashing” doesn’t find “Creation bashing” will.

[Jon]

Quick update on my MCOL. From the court:

“Upon reading the amended particulars of claim it is ordered that the Defendant shall file and serve an amended defence by 28th July 2022.”

[Lady London]

Jon wrote:

Quick update on my MCOL. From the court:

“Upon reading the amended particulars of claim it is ordered that the Defendant shall file and serve an amended defence by 28th July 2022.”

Excellent Jon. This should force Creation to file a defence so we can see what it’s made of.

A pity the FOS isn’t doing something similar.

[Jon]

Indeed, hopefully it will – although I imagine they’ll look for a way not to 😉

[BuildBackBetter]

Those whose cards are blocked – especially the free cards – are you cancelling them?
I see no point holding the card. The credit can be put to use in a better card rather than simply lying unused and being reported in credit profile.

[Rui N.]

What cards are blocked?
On the culling that this thread is about accounts were closed, not simply blocked.

[BuildBackBetter]

I can login to my card account. Just can’t use the card. Maybe that’s what you refer to as ‘account closed’?
In any case, the question is whether to leave things as they are, or reach out to them to get the account terminated completely. My only worry is I might lose the IHG status as it seems the card is still being reported for the purpose of status.

[stevenhp1987]

BuildBackBetter wrote:

I can login to my card account. Just can’t use the card. Maybe that’s what you refer to as ‘account closed’?
In any case, the question is whether to leave things as they are, or reach out to them to get the account terminated completely. My only worry is I might lose the IHG status as it seems the card is still being reported for the purpose of status.

The online account is presumably left to allow you to see your statements.

Have you checked your credit report? I would be surprised if the card account isn’t showing as closed.

[Rui N.]

Yeah, just because your online account is accessible, doesn’t mean that your card account is open. Online accounts being accessible after a card is closed is quite common.

The card has been showing as closed closed on the credit report a day before the date that was on the letter (maybe I should add that to the FOS complaint? *this forum needs smiles*). Like Steve, I’d be very surprised is that wasn’t the case for everyone else.