Making a complaint

How we handle complaints

If you contact us with a complaint we'll do our best to resolve it immediately. If this isn't possible, we'll write to you within 5 working days. And, if we need more time to investigate, we'll send you an update within 4 weeks.

If you're still not satisfied, or it takes more than 8 weeks to resolve your complaint, you can take your case to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

How we can help you

See how well we're dealing with customer complaints

In the last six months of 2012, we’ve continued to gather your thoughts on our complaints process and we really appreciated your ideas on how we can improve.

You told us that making it easy to complain, combined with our speed of response, our ability to be flexible and resolve any issues professionally and answering all of your issues is still of the utmost importance.

In the last six months we have:

• Reviewed how and what we communicate to customers, we have made changes to ensure that any new letters to customers are clear and jargon free.
• Reviewed how we carry out root cause analysis and changed our approach so that we can better identify problems and fix them so they don’t keep happening.

In the next six months we plan to:

• Continue to improve how we communicate to customers, by reviewing our existing letters and providing specialist training to our correspondence teams.
• Provide additional training for our specialist complaint handlers.
• Review our automated system to ensure that it is as simple as possible.

We will continue to stay focused on the small but important things that make all the difference, resolving your complaint quickly, with empathy and to your satisfaction.

So you can see how we've done in 2012, we’ve provided a summary of our complaints data for the second half of the year.

Firm name: Marks & Spencer Financial Services Plc
Group: HSBC Group
Period covered: 1 July - 31 December 2012
Trading names covered: M&S Money, M&S Bank, M&S Insurance, M&S Savings and Investments

• Banking: We have 4.6 opened complaints per 1,000 relevant banking accounts. We closed 16,538 complaints.**
• General Insurance and Pure Protection: M&S Bank stopped selling Payment Protection Insurance in April 2008.***
• Investments: We have 0 opened complaints per 1,000 investment products.

In the last six months of 2012, we also opened 31 complaints relating to Marks and Spencer Unit Trust Management Ltd and 5 complaints relating to Marks and Spencer Savings and Investments Ltd.

Complaints history

Complaints 1 Jan – 30 June 2012

Complaints 1 July – 31 Dec 2011

Complaints 1 Jan – 30 June 2011

Complaints 1 July – 31 Dec 2010

Complaints 1 Jan – 30 June 2010

Financial Ombudsman Service

If you wish to, you should contact the Financial Ombudsman Service within six months of the date on our final letter to you.

Call 0800 0 234 567 free for people phoning from a ’fixed line‘ (for example, a landline at home).

Or 0300 123 9 123 free for mobile phone users who pay a monthly charge for calls to numbers starting 01 or 02.

Write to the Financial Ombudsman Service, South Quay Plaza, 183 Marsh Wall, London E14 9SR.

More about the Financial Ombudsman Service

Financial Services Authority (FSA)

For further information and published complaints data visit the FSA website.

Notes

* Complaints upheld by firm refers to the percentage of complaints that the bank has found in the customer's favour either in whole or part.

** The number of complaints received from Complaints Management Companies has continued to increase in the second half of 2012. Excluding these figures the underlying trend for complaints has decreased.

*** Complaints within the General Insurance and Pure Protection category relate to existing and closed policies. In line with industry practice, the number of open and closed complaints do not include complaints from customers who had not purchased the product.