If you have ever been the victim of a fraud or a scam, you are far from alone. Figures released at the end of January revealed that from April to December last year, consumers in Scotland lodged over 1,300 complaints about frauds and scams to the Financial Ombudsman Service – that’s almost 40% higher than the same period in 2023.
Just under half of these complaints were about authorised push payment (APP) scams, where someone is tricked into transferring money to a fraudster’s account believing it to be a genuine payment.
However, frauds and scams come in all sorts of guises, and they aren’t always easy to recognise. For victims, the psychological toll can be as significant as the financial loss.
What are frauds and scams?
Fraud and scams are crimes where someone cheats someone else out of their money through theft or deception. Anyone can fall victim to a fraud or a scam.
Examples include scams where you’ve been tricked into making a payment, for example to keep money ‘safe’, to pay a fake invoice, to make a fake investment, or to buy goods or services that don’t exist.
A fraudster may also have found a way to take money from you, for example by convincing you to give them your bank details and then taken money without your permission, by using your debit or credit card without your knowledge or permission, or by stealing your identity.
The Financial Ombudsman Service
Normally, when something goes wrong and money goes missing, you’ll make a complaint to the bank, insurance company, pension provider or whatever it may be, and they will resolve it. But what if they can’t, or won’t?
This is where the Financial Ombudsman Service comes in. It’s a free, easy-to-use service that was set up by Parliament specifically to help people who have a complaint about a financial product or service, and feel they have been treated unfairly.
Every year the Financial Ombudsman Service helps to resolve thousands of complaints about financial products and services. They can look at complaints about banking, credit cards and loans, insurance claims, investments and pensions, and fraud and scams. The Financial Ombudsman will look at your complaint whether you’re an individual, small to medium enterprise (SME), charity or trust.
So if you have lost money because of fraud or a scam – and you are unhappy with how your bank or payment service provider handled things – the Financial Ombudsman may be able to help.
They won’t be able to solve the initial crime – that’s a matter for the police – but they can investigate how your bank or payment service dealt with it, even if you’re not sure how you were defrauded, and they have the powers to put things right.
Making a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service
The Financial Ombudsman Service is free and easy to use. When you contact them, they will gather the evidence from you, the financial services business, and any relevant third parties, and they will investigate what has happened.
Once they’ve finished investigating, they will decide whether the business treated you fairly or not, and explain to you how they reached their decision.
If they think the business treated you unfairly, they will tell them to make things right, for example by reimbursing the money you’ve lost to the fraud or scam.
They might also ask them to compensate you for any distress and inconvenience caused to you.