Mina asked a CMC to make a claim for mis-sold PPI on behalf of her late mother – but despite not receiving redress from her bank, the CMC kept contacting her asking for its share, and then closed her case. We found that the CMC hadn’t had the authority to progress the claim – but it didn't communicate effectively with Mina, and caused upset in chasing her for payment. So we told it to pay compensation.
What happened
Mina contacted us after having problems with her claims management company’s handling of her late mother’s PPI claim.
Mina said the CMC had submitted the claim to her mother’s bank, and the bank had upheld it. She said she hadn’t heard anything further from her CMC, so decided to contact her bank for an update. She told us the bank had asked her for some extra information, which she’d provided. But she still hadn’t received any redress.
Mina explained that, since then, she’d been harassed by the CMC over text and email asking for a percentage of the redress. She said she’d tried to contact the CMC to say she hadn’t yet received the money, and couldn’t get a response.
Mina told us she’d complained to the CMC about its messages, and that she felt she’d done most of the work on the PPI claim. But she’d continued to receive requests for payment.
She had now had an apology from the CMC for not halting its debt collection process. The CMC had closed the claim and waived its fee, allowing Mina to liaise directly with the bank. But Mina remained unhappy at the service she’d received and asked us to step in.
What we did
We looked through the correspondence between Mina and the CMC to see what had gone wrong. We established that there had been an issue with the grant of probate, which meant that the CMC needed another signatory on its letter of authority. Because the bank couldn’t provide any information to the CMC without the other signatory, the CMC had closed the claim.
Although Mina had shared some information with the bank, the records suggested the CMC had processed the claim correctly up to the point it was closed. However, the CMC hadn’t closed the claim correctly on its system, which was why Mina continued to receive messages asking for payment.
The CMC said it had provided feedback to the member of staff who tried to close the file – but we didn’t think it had considered the impact the payment demands had on her at a difficult time.
We explained to Mina that the CMC was within its rights to cancel the claim when it became clear it didn’t have sufficient authority to make it.
But we told the CMC that it hadn’t explained clearly enough when and why it was closing the claim – meaning Mina didn’t know it wasn’t being progressed. We told the CMC to pay her compensation to reflect the distress its poor service had caused.