September 19, 2009

Angry customers have been queuing up to complain about their banks, according to figures published this week by the Financial Ombudsman Service. Each of the high street banks had thousands of complaints that ended up being referred to the Ombudsman, with Barclays topping the list of shame with more than 8,000 complaints referred during the first six months of the year.

The number of grievances has doubled over the past year, chiefly because of the campaign against bank charges led by The Independent. Because the banks have, as yet, failed to deal adequately with the charges issue, tens of thousands of fed-up customers have been forced to give up on banks' own complaints teams and take their problem to the Ombudsman. Stripping those out, the figures may not look so bad.