A director refers her complaint to our service several months after our time limit

Time limits : Category Banking : Category Exceptional circumstances : Category

Joan sends us her complaint about her company’s bank several months after our time limit.

What happened

Joan is a director of a furniture company. She had a complaint about her company’s bank refusing to release money for a purchase – and hadn’t explained its reasons why.

Joan complained to the bank – and it sent her a ‘final response’ letter saying that Joan had six months to complain to the Financial Ombudsman if she was unhappy with its response.

Unhappy with the outcome, Joan referred her complaint to us several months after the deadline expired.

What we said

We asked Joan why she referred her complaint to us after the deadline and if there was any exceptional circumstances that caused the delay.

She told us the demands of running her own business had prevented her complaining on time.

We didn’t agree this counted as exceptional circumstances, and so we didn’t investigate her complaint.

Banking and payments

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