The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has announced plans to “name and shame” companies that receive high levels of complaints from customers.
The watchdog wants companies that receive in excess of 500 complaints every six months to publish details on their websites.
Under the new proposals, firms would be required to reveal how many complaints had been opened and closed during the past six months as well as the proportion of cases that were dealt with within eight weeks.
Firms would also be required to illustrate how many complaints they received per thousand customers so that potential clients could compare between large scale and small scale companies.
The announcements come in response to a rise in the overall number of complaints that were upheld by the Financial Ombudsman Service during the last financial year.
The FSA hopes the exposing of poor practice will encourage companies to focus more on customer satisfaction and how they deal with complaints.
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