Complaints Procedure

Unhappy?

Our number one priority is to provide our customers with the highest level of satisfaction we can through expert knowledge and effective service.

However, we know that occasionally things can go wrong. Customer feedback helps us understand where things have gone wrong and gives us the opportunity to put them right. It also helps us understand where we need to improve our products and services.

If you have a complaint, we would like to be able to speak to you about it to give us the opportunity to put it right.

Call us

Call our office on 01908 597 811, Our office is open Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 18:00

Write to us

In order for us to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible, please include the following information in your letter:

• Full name
• Purchase/re-mortgage address
• As much information about the complaint as you can provide
• Any action you wish us to take to resolve your complaint 

You can either send by email to complaints@charleston.co.uk or alternatively post to 

Charleston Financial Services Limited
9 Copperhouse Court
Milton Keynes
MK7 8NL

If your complaint cannot be resolved straight away, we will:

• Acknowledge receipt in writing, confirming our understanding of your complaint, who will be handling it and giving you the opportunity to provide any further information or documents. We will also outline potential time frames for our final response following our internal investigation.

The Financial Ombudsman Service

If you’re dissatisfied with our response, you can ask the Financial Ombudsman Service for an independent review free of charge, but you must do so within six months of the date of our final response letter.

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) will only consider your complaint once you’ve tried to resolve it with us, so please take up your concerns with us first and we’ll do all we can to help. We do our best to resolve complaints and only around 15% of cases are referred to the FOS for an adjudication.

The FOS is also only able to consider certain categories of complaint, for example complaints about Buy to Let mortgages, which are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority will normally be outside the jurisdiction of the FOS.

In addition, the FOS might not be able to consider your complaint if:

• What you’re complaining about happened more than six years ago, and
• You’re complaining more than three years after you realised (or should have realised) that there was a problem.

If your complaint was made outside of these time limits, which is a matter for The Ombudsman to decide, The Ombudsman will not have our permission to consider your complaint and so will only be able to do so in very limited circumstances. For example, if it believes that the delay was as a result of exceptional circumstances.

Further information on the services provided by the Financial Ombudsman Service can be found on their website: http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk or alternatively,

Post: The Financial Ombudsman Service, Exchange Tower, London. E14 9S

Phone: 0800 023 4567 or 0300 123 9123

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