personal finance

Consumer complaints data shows rise of online rage


What does the chart show?
The 10 fastest-growing areas for customer complaints in the UK, revealing a huge increase in gripes about online products and services in the last financial year. The data comes from Resolver, the biggest independent complaints website in the UK, which handled 1.4m complaints during that time.

Which sectors were the most complained about?
Complaints about payday lenders increased the most in the year to April 2019, rising by 419 per cent to 28,543 compared to a year previously. The second highest category was complaints about ticket sales, which rose 213 per cent to 8,186 in the same period.

Significantly, this is the first year that the volume of complaints about online shopping has overtaken those about high street retailers — a sign of the changing way Britain shops. And the rise of online shopping also means the number of complaints about parcel deliveries has also soared — up 203 per cent — while film and TV streaming service complaints were up by 106 per cent.

What other trends are emerging from customer complaints?
An area to watch is the rise of “buy now, pay later”. Online retailers are increasingly using digital finance providers to tempt shoppers into buying on tick. It’s all too easy to sign up, but shoppers often find — to their cost — that it is harder to keep track of repayment dates, landing them with high interest and charges on their purchases.

Currently ranked the 40th most complained about product or service, Resolver spokesman Martyn James predicts “buy now pay later” will rise up the charts in years to come. “People are drifting into credit agreements,” he says. “This is essentially catalogue credit, reinvented for the digital era.”

Have any sectors seen a decrease in complaints?
Although payment protection insurance (PPI) remains the most complained-about product — there were 550,468 complaints in the past financial year — the number of PPI complaints actually fell by 24 per cent year on year, down from 727,195 the previous year. Experts say the reason for the fall is that the PPI mis-selling scandal has peaked, with millions already receiving compensation. Anyone intending to complain needs to get their skates on — the August 29 deadline for lodging a complaint about PPI mis-selling is fast approaching.

Are the Resolver stats in line with the regulator’s figures?
Broadly speaking, yes. In April, the Financial Conduct Authority published its report on the number of complaints made against financial services firms in the past six months of the 2018 compared to the first half of the year. Over the entire market, the FCA said the number of PPI complaints decreased by 8 per cent in the second half of the year, from 1.72m during the first six months of 2018 to 1.58m. The FCA said part of the reason for the dip in complaints figures was that there was a change in reporting which allowed firms to exclude PPI complaints from the figures where it was established the complainant had not purchased a PPI policy from the firm.



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