Customer support

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) set a deadline of 29 August 2019 for PPI complaints and delivered a nationwide communications campaign to raise awareness of this deadline among consumers.

Generally, if you didn’t make a complaint to your PPI provider on or before 29 August 2019, you can no longer claim money back for PPI by complaining to providers or the Financial Ombudsman Service.

If you feel you have genuine exceptional circumstances which have prevented you from making a PPI complaint before this deadline, you can contact us as explained below, and we will consider your case. We will ask you to provide evidence to support the fact that you have been unable to make a complaint before the publicised deadline.

Who is PA (GI)?

Between 1988 and 2004, PA (GI), which was a wholly-owned indirect subsidiary of Royal & Sun Alliance (R & SA) Group, sold creditor insurance policies, which included Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) through third party agents. Among these was the clothing retailer Next Retail Limited, which sold the policies in connection with its Next Directory Credit Account.

Please note, PA (GI) stopped underwriting PPI policies in December 2004, so any Next Directory Credit Account taken out after January 2005 would not have had PPI included.

How you can check if you had PPI on your Next account

If you would like to check whether you had PPI on your Next account, you can check for free by contacting Next directly using one of the contact methods below:

Online - Chat with an advisor at Speak to an Advisor - Online Support
Email - Send an email to customer_team@next.co.uk
Phone - Contact Next on 0333 777 8180 (Monday to Friday 8am-9pm / Saturday 9am-5pm / Sunday 9am-2pm)

In writing - Write to Next at:

Accounts Administration Department
Next Directory
Gedding Road
Leicester
LE5 5DW

If you think that genuine exceptional circumstances apply in your case, you can raise your complaint in any of the following ways. We will ask you to fully explain the reasons why you have been unable to make a complaint before the deadline of 29 August 2019 and provide us with suitable evidence.

In writing - Write to us at:

PA(GI) PPI Complaints Team
1 Wythall Green Way
Wythall
Birmingham
B47 6WG

Email - You can email us, but please be aware that emails are not 100% secure.

What if you are unhappy with our response to your complaint?

If you have received a final response from us and are unhappy with the outcome of our investigation, or if we have not given you our final response within eight weeks and you are unhappy with the time we are taking, you can ask an independent Ombudsman to review your complaint. There are several Ombudsman schemes in the UK and Ireland that provide consumers with a free, independent service for resolving disputes between firms and their customers.

Find out which Ombudsman to contact, if you choose to do so.

Copies of PA(GI) complaint handling reports can be made available upon request.

Frequently asked questions

Am I too late to raise a new PPI complaint?

The deadline to raise a new PPI complaint, set by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), was 29 August 2019. Generally, if you didn’t make a complaint to us before this date, you can no longer claim money back for your Next PPI policy. If you believe that exceptional circumstances have prevented you from making a complaint before this date, you can contact us using the details shown above – please note however that you will be asked to provide suitable evidence.

What are exceptional circumstances?

If you feel that exceptional circumstances have prevented you from making a complaint in time, we will ask you to explain the circumstances and let us know why they have prevented you from complaining in time. We will also ask you to provide us with suitable evidence. We will assess the information and evidence you provide to us and make a decision. An example of circumstances that we may consider exceptional are a death of a close family member, or serious ill health, just before the deadline.

I checked with Next to see if I had PPI before the deadline of 29 August 2019, but the deadline has now passed – can I still make a complaint?

If you checked with Next to find out whether you had PPI between 29 June 2019 and 29 August 2019, you can still make a PPI complaint, providing you do so as soon as you receive a response from Next, even if this response is received after the deadline.

I sent in my complaint before the deadline of 29 August 2019, but I haven’t received anything from you as yet – do I need to do anything?

When we receive your complaint, we will acknowledge your complaint in writing – this usually takes between 5 and 10 working days, but due to the large volume of complaints we have received, this may take a little longer. If you have still not received anything from us within 3 weeks of the date you raised your complaint, please contact us using the details shown above, and we will let you know what is happening with your complaint.

I have completed the Letter of Authority form you sent to me, but I have received nothing from you since – do I need to do anything?

Once we have received the completed Letter of Authority from you, we will write to Next and ask them to provide us with your account information. Once we receive this back from Next, we will investigate your complaint, and write to you with our final response. We aim to resolve your complaint within 8 weeks, however due to the large volume of complaints received, I’m afraid that this is currently taking considerably longer. We would ask for your patience and understanding at this very busy time.

Will I lose out as a result of any delay in you dealing with my complaint?

You will not be financially disadvantaged as a result of any delay in dealing with your complaint.

Will I receive a refund of the PPI premiums I paid?

If you did not have PPI on your account, we will write back to you and confirm this. If you did pay for PPI on your account, and you have not already had this money returned to you, we will generally refund these premiums to you with suitable interest added. There may be exceptions where we are not able to refund your premiums – for example if you have made a claim under your PPI policy and the value of the claim was higher than the amount of premiums you paid with interest added.

We work hard to provide excellent customer service, but sometimes we may make mistakes. If we have made a mistake, we want to hear from you as soon as possible so that we can put the matter right straight away.

In this section, we tell you how to make a complaint to us and we explain how we will investigate and do our best to remedy the problem.

How you can make a complaint

If you have a complaint, we want to hear from you. We operate a full complaint handling service which will allow you to get your complaint to us in a variety of ways. Please use this free service to make contact with us, using one of the contact methods below:

By phone

If you are unhappy with any aspect of our service, we would like to hear about it. As a first step, please call us on 0330 024 0937 between 8.30am and 5.30pm, Monday to Friday. Low call rates apply although costs can vary between telecom providers. Calls may be recorded for monitoring and training purposes

In writing

You can write to us at:

Phoenix Group
PO Box 1033
Ipswich
Suffolk
IP1 9XQ

Claims Management Companies

You may have seen some publicity about Claims Management Companies and you may even have been approached by one. Claims Management Companies operate by making a complaint on your behalf and will typically take a fee from any compensation that is paid.

Claims Management Companies do not provide a free service. The Financial Conduct Authority advises that if you decide to use a Claims Management Company for any type of complaint make sure you understand the fees it charges, and never pay a fee upfront. In addition, make sure it is regulated by the Claims Management Regulator or is a member of a professional body (for example the Law Society of England and Wales, the Law Society of Northern Ireland or the Law Society of Scotland) because they must meet certain standards.

For more details please take a look at the FCA’s How to Complain.

What we need from you

To help us investigate your complaint quickly and thoroughly, please give us your full name, address, policy number and, if you can, a telephone number where we can contact you. Please explain in as much detail as you can what the problem is, and what you would like us to do to resolve your complaint.

When can you expect a response from us?

We may call you to try and deal with your complaint straight away, or to make sure we properly understand what the problem is. If we can’t get in touch, or if you prefer not to be contacted by telephone, we will send you a letter within five working days acknowledging your complaint.

We aim to resolve your complaint within four weeks (20 business days) from the day we receive it. If we get to the four week stage and haven’t been able to resolve things, we will write to you to let you know we are still investigating, but need more time.

If we haven’t been able to resolve your complaint within eight weeks, we will write to you again explaining why the investigation is taking longer. Whenever possible, we will also tell you how much extra time we expect to take.

What happens if we are not responsible for your complaint?

If your complaint needs to be dealt with by another company, we will pass the complaint on for that company to investigate and will let you have their contact details.

What happens at the end of the investigation?

When we have concluded the complaint investigation we will send you a final decision letter to let you know the outcome. This will explain the basis of our conclusion.

If you remain dissatisfied and you are concerned about the way in which your life or pension policy was sold or marketed to you, or about the way in which your life policy has been administered, you may ask the Financial Ombudsman Service to undertake an independent review of your complaint, provided you send your complaint to the Ombudsman within six months of our final response.

Please contact:

The Financial Ombudsman Service
Exchange Tower
London E14 9SR

Email:
complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk

Website:
www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk

We are sorry that you have cause to complain to Phoenix Unit Trust Managers Limited. Your business is important to us and we will endeavour to resolve your dissatisfaction fairly and promptly.

How to make your complaint
If you wish to make a complaint, please provide us with your full name, address, account number or contract number, together with the full details of your complaint. You can contact us in the following ways:

Telephone: 0345 584 2803

In writing: Phoenix Unit Trust Managers Ltd, Floor 1,1 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2, Ireland

** Calls may be made between the hours of 0900 hours and 1700 hours Monday to Friday. Please note calls may be recorded for training purposes or for the verification of facts.

Our commitment
For complex complaints that cannot be resolved by the close of business on the business day following its receipt:

You will receive an acknowledgement of your complaint in writing within two business days of receipt.

If we are unable to resolve your complaint within four weeks of receipt, we will advise you in writing explaining why we are not in a position to resolve your complaint and an indication of when we will make further contact.

In the unlikely event that we are unable to resolve your complaint within eight weeks, we will write to explain why this is and an indication of when we will be in a position to make a final response.

The Financial Ombudsman Service
If you are not satisfied with the outcome of our investigation into your complaint, or we have not been able to provide you with a full response within eight weeks of receipt of your complaint, you may refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). We will provide you with the details for referring to the FOS, with our final response or our explanatory letter if we have been unable to resolve the matter within 8 weeks.

Please contact:

The Financial Ombudsman Service
Exchange Tower
London E14 9SR

Phone:

There are two numbers to choose from, 0800 023 4567, which is free for people phoning from a ‘fixed line’ (e.g. a landline at home) or 0300 123 9123, which is free for mobile-phone users who pay a monthly charge for calls to numbers starting 01 or 02.

Email:
complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk

Website:
www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk