Complaints

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) defines a complaint as:

“Any expression of dissatisfaction, whether oral or written, and whether justified or not, from or on behalf of an eligible complainant about the firm's provision of, or failure to provide, a financial service or redress determination.”

Better.co.uk takes complaints and negative feedback seriously. We’re committed to ensuring that we handle all complaints fairly, consistently and quickly. 

We regularly review the complaints we get to learn from them and improve our level of service for the future.

If you have a complaint about your Better.co.uk journey you can contact us by:

• emailing: [email protected] 

• writing to: Albion Mills, 18 East Tenter Street, London, E1 8DN

All Better.co.uk staff are trained to identify complaints.

Once we get a complaint, we report it to our Customer Experience and Operational Managers for review.

If we can resolve your complaint within 3 business days, we’ll contact you to explain the outcome of our investigation. We’ll also tell you how we think we can resolve it. 

If you accept the resolution, we will confirm this to you in writing.

If we cannot resolve your complaint within 3 days, we’ll write to you to tell you:

• we’ve received your complaint

• we understand your complaint

• who will be handling it

We’ll also give you a chance to provide any more information or documents.

After this, we’ll investigate your complaint in full. 

We aim to give you our final response with a full explanation of the findings within 8 weeks.

If we cannot give you a final response within this time, we'll write to you to:

• explain our position

• set out next steps 

• tell you about your right to refer to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS)

We will consider your complaint closed if: 

• we’ve sent you a final response

• you’ve told us in writing that you accept one of our earlier responses

• you refer your complaint to FOS and they tell us in writing that the complaint has been closed

If you’re dissatisfied with our response, you can ask the Financial Ombudsman Service for a free independent review. You must do so within 6 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.

Tell us about your concerns first and we’ll do all we can to help. 

The FOS is also only able to consider certain types of complaints. 

The FOS do not investigate complaints about Buy to Let mortgages as it’s outside of their jurisdiction.

This is because Buy to Let mortgages are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The FOS might not be able to consider your complaint if:

• what you’re complaining about happened over 6 years ago

• you’re complaining more than 3 years after you realised, or should’ve realised there was a problem

The FOS will decide if your complaint was made outside of these time limits. If they decide it is, they will not have our permission to consider your complaint.

There are few circumstances where they can. For example, if they think the delay was a result of exceptional circumstances.

Find out what services the Financial Ombudsman Service offer on their website: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk.

Or contact them by:

• writing to: The Financial Ombudsman Service, Exchange Tower, London. E14 9SR

• calling: 0800 023 4567 or 0300 123 9123

• emailing: [email protected]

The ADR directive is European law. So there are other ways to resolve contractual disputes between consumers and businesses. 

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is the ADR provider for Financial Services in the UK.

They provide a complaint handling service under the ADR directive as well as their role as an ombudsman service.

Better.co.uk has decided to continue dealing with customers’ complaints when we get them, rather than pass responsibility to the FOS under the ADR directive.

This does not affect customers’ statutory rights to refer complaints to the FOS like we set out above.

Complaints about financial services firms may also be sent to the Online Dispute Resolution website: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

Any complaints the ODR are sent are forwarded to the FOS and then to Better.co.uk. 

Complaints through the ODR are treated in the same way as those through other methods.