Compulsive spending and gambling harm

Compulsive spending – also known as 'compulsive buying disorder' (CBD) or oniomania – is when someone's shopping and spending habits get out of control.

This might include problem gambling, which may lead to gambling harm.

Many people enjoy shopping and gambling without experiencing harm. But when spending feels uncontrollable – or gambling becomes too much of a habit – it can damage someone’s mental and physical health, relationships, and finances.

Compulsive spending and gambling can impact your finances in so many ways. We see cases that involve compulsive spending or gambling harm about every financial product, including:

• loans
• mortgage extensions
• pensions that have been used for gambling, and
• high-risk investments
• general banking, including account support.

People bring complaints to us when compulsive spending or gambling has caused them money problems and they believe a financial business:

• could have done more to stop that happening
• could have helped them
• did something wrong and they've lost out as a result.

For example, you might have:

• asked a financial business for a gaming block to stop gambling payments, but they didn’t put one in place or the block didn’t work properly
• told the business about your compulsive spending or gambling habit, but they didn’t offer you enough or any support
• been given a loan or credit when the financial business should have known about your compulsive spending and now you’re struggling to pay off debts
• been offered a trading account which you used to enable your compulsive spending or gambling habit.

Our service is free and easy to use. 

1. Before bringing your complaint to us, you should make a formal complaint to the company involved.
2. If they don't send you a final response letter within eight weeks – or you're unhappy with their response – you can bring your complaint to us.
3. Using the link below, check we can help you. Our online tool will also tell you more about what we need to know upfront and will take you to our online complaint form.
4. Fill in our online complaint form. If there’s something about you or your complaint which makes things particularly urgent, let us know when you get in touch. Your case will be assigned to a case handler who will contact you when they start to investigate and talk you through our process.
5. To help us consider a complaint fairly, we’ll ask you to provide more information, but we’ll explain why and give you time to provide it.

Please try to keep any relevant evidence that may help us understand what’s happened, such as letters, statements, and notes. You can send copies of these instead of the originals if that’s easier.

If you’d rather not tell us some things directly – perhaps because they’re difficult to talk about – you can ask someone else to help you with the complaint or speak to us your behalf. This might be a friend, family member or someone like a support worker.

We handle complaints with discretion and tact, and we can accept evidence in confidence.

We’ll make our decision about what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties. To reach a decision, we'll also consider:  

• the relevant law 
• any regulations that applied at the time 
• any industry codes of conduct in force at the time 
• what happened and how it has affected your life
• whether the financial business knew – or should have known – that you were vulnerable
• any support the financial business offered or gave you.

We'll tell you whether we believe you've been treated unfairly or not and explain how we reached our decision. 

If we think you've lost money, we'll tell the financial business to put things right. This might include:

• paying you compensation for financial loss
• making changes to your credit file
• doing things differently for you in the future.

We may also tell them to pay you compensation for any distress or inconvenience you have suffered.

UK Debt Service offers information and advice on compulsive spending.

GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline the offers gambling harm support. 

The NHS offers help for problems with gambling.

Citizens Advice offers a free service, including for help with gambling problems