HEARING the adverts on the radio and seeing the plethora of claims firms filling up day-time TV would make you think that reclaiming payment protection insurance is the most complicated thing on Earth – but it’s not, writes Peter Ranscombe.
I started off by looking at Martin Lewis’ moneysavingexpert.com website, which had a very clear guide giving details of how to reclaim PPI payments if you think you were mis-sold the insurance.
The website even gave a link to the form that you need to fill in and print off from the Financial Ombudsman Service, which I completed and then posted to Bank of Scotland.
The bank wrote to me to acknowledge receipt of the form and then I got a phone call a few weeks later to check some of the facts on the form.
I explained that I’d felt pressurised into taking out PPI – that it was presented as being inevitable that everyone takes out the insurance rather than it being just an optional extra.
Admittedly, it took Bank of Scotland three phone calls to take down all the details it needed, but that was the most-complicated part of the process.
Two weeks later, the bank sent a cheque through the post; the £55 I got back represented the money I’d paid in PPI, plus 8 per cent interest per year.
Not a big sum compared to the thousands of pounds that people have reclaimed, but worth doing.
From beginning to end, it only took a few weeks.