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our funding
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information for businesses covered by the ombudsman service

This section answers a number of frequently-asked questions (FAQs) about:

our funding

when the case fee is payable

at what stage do I have to pay the case fee?

When we receive a completed complaint form from a consumer, staff in our front-line consumer-contact division will check the form and any paperwork with it.

At this initial stage, based on the business's final response to the consumer and on what the complaint seems to be about, we may decide the complaint:

Only around one in six of all the initial complaints and enquiries we receive go on to require more detailed consideration work by our adjudicators or ombudsmen. And it is only at that stage that a case becomes "chargeable".

We invoice businesses for chargeable cases at the end of the month in which the case is closed. We do not charge a business for the first three cases we deal with during the year. For the fourth and each subsequent complaint, we charge a case fee of £500.

For more details see our special factsheet:

a quick guide to ... funding and case fees