Complaints Procedure

Any reference to “we”, “our” or “us” in this Complaints Procedure shall mean The Debt Advice Service, which is a trading name of Pacific Financial Solutions Limited.

Pacific Financial Solutions Limited is a company incorporated in England and Wales, with company number 09404359 and having its registered office at Ram Mill, Gordon Street, Chadderton, Oldham, England, OL9 9RH

Pacific Financial Solutions Limited is registered under the Data Protection Act 2018 with the Information Commissioner’s Office (the, “ICO”). ICO Fee Payer Register Number: ZA207735

The following complaints procedure is made available to every consumer upon request, it is published on the company’s website, and is included in a summary form in our customer documentation.

We are committed to resolving complaints as quickly as possible. In the event you are unhappy with our services and wish to make a complaint, please follow the appropriate procedure.

At Pacific Financial Solutions our aim is to provide you, at all times, with a first class standard of service and the highest standards of advice. However, there may be occasions when you feel that these objectives have not been achieved.  If you have a complaint about the service provided by Us then you can contact us in any of the following ways:

By post to:

The Debt Advice Service

Ram Mill

Gordon Street

Chadderton

OL9 9RH

By email to: compliance@thedebtadviceservice.co.uk

Or you can call us on: 01706 404143

Dealing with Your Complaint

We take all complaints seriously and will deal with your concerns in the following manner;

If your complaint is in respect of advice provided

We will acknowledge receipt of the complaint within three working days and we will respond to your complaint in full within eight weeks. If we require any further information from you while we investigate your complaint, we will contact you.  If your complaint is complex and will take longer than 8 weeks to investigate then we will keep you updated of the progress while we investigate.

1. We will first acknowledge your complaint promptly following receipt, enclosing a copy of these procedures.
2. If you make an oral complaint, our written acknowledgement will set out our understanding of your complaint.
3. If we have reasonable grounds to be satisfied that another firm may be solely or jointly responsible for the concerns arising, we will promptly forward the complaint or the relevant part of it to that firm. We will write to you to confirm our actions and provide contact details of the firm concerned.
4. Where we are able to resolve your complaint within 3 full business days following receipt, and this is to your satisfaction, we will issue a written summary of our findings and conclusion.
5. If having received this letter you remain dissatisfied, you may refer the issue to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) who can be contacted at: The Financial Ombudsman Service, Exchange Tower, London, E14 9SR, Telephone 0800 0234 567 or www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk. We will also provide you with a copy of the Financial Ombudsman Service leaflet; ‘your complaint and the ombudsman’.
6. If your complaint cannot be resolved within this time, we will ensure that you are kept informed of our progress with regard to the investigation.
7. We will endeavour to send you our Final Decision Letter; addressing your concerns and providing you with our decision within 8 weeks or keep you informed of the progress if it is not resolved before then.
8. If our investigation is still ongoing after 8 weeks, we will send you confirmation of this in writing along with an explanation as to why we have been unable to complete our investigations within this timescale. We will also give you an indication when you can next expect contact from us and a copy of the FOS’s leaflet above.
9. At this stage, you will be entitled to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (see details above).
10. We will continue to investigate your complaint until we are in a position to send you our Final Decision Letter.
11. If your complaint is upheld, we will provide you with fair compensation for any acts or omissions for which we are responsible, once you have accepted our decision.
12. If you are not satisfied with the outcome of your complaint, you can refer the matter to the FOS at the above address. Please note you must refer the matter to them within 6 months of the date of our Final Decision Letter. Further details about this will be confirmed in the FOS’s leaflet.
13. We shall deem the matter closed when our Final Decision Letter has been issued or where you have accepted our earlier response.

 

If your complaint is in relation to the administration of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA)

1. We will acknowledge receipt of the complaint within five working days.
2. If we are still investigating your complaint after four weeks, we will explain to you the reasons why and indicate when you can expect a full and final response.
3. We should have finalised our investigation and issued our final response within a maximum of eight weeks. When we have completed our investigation, we will send you a final response. This response will detail the investigation and our findings. It will also confirm our conclusions and whether the complaint has been upheld, partially upheld, or not upheld. The response will also explain any action being taken, or that has been taken, to correct the situation that led you to complain.

 

Regulator Details 

The Insolvency Practitioners at Pacific Financial Solutions Limited are Jason Bowen, who is regulated by the Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland (ICAS), and Laura Stewart, who is regulated by The Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA). Both ICAS and the IPA promote and maintain high standards throughout the insolvency industry and undertake regular monitoring visits to each member to ensure that all Insolvency Practitioners act in line with the insolvency rules, relevant legislation, the code of ethics and best practice guidelines.

Further Escalation 

If you are dissatisfied with our final response, or we have not been able to resolve your complaint, or indeed at any time of the process, you can escalate the complaint to ICAS using the Insolvency Complaints Gateway using one of the following methods;

• Telephoning the Insolvency Service Enquiry Line on 0300 678 0015 (Monday to Friday 9 am – 5 pm)
• Using the online Complaints Form at the following address https://www.insolvencydirect.bis.gov.uk/ExternalOnlineForms/InsolvencyPractitionerComplaaspx
• Email to enquiryline@insolvency.gov.uk
• Posting the online complaints form to: IP Complaints, Insolvency Service, 3rd Floor, 1 City Walk, Leeds, LS11 9DA.
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Please note that even if a complaint is upheld, regulators will not intervene or adjudicate on case specific matters; they will only consider whether disciplinary sanctions should be ordered against the insolvency practitioner.