Issues ›
Service failure
Errors, delays and poor communication that do not fit a more specific category.
17,589banking decisions on this issue
43.0%upheld where an outcome is recorded
40firms with 20+ decisions here
Rules the ombudsman applied
Derived from the rules actually cited in these decisions, ranked by how often they appear — not from an editorial view of which rules matter.
Consumer Credit Act 1974 · cited in 390
Consumer credit rights, including Section 75 joint liability for card purchases.
FCA DISP (Dispute Resolution) · cited in 222
How firms must handle complaints and how the Ombudsman decides them.
Equality Act 2010 · cited in 185
Duties toward customers with protected characteristics, including reasonable adjustments.
FCA Consumer Duty (PRIN 2A) · cited in 121
Requires firms to deliver good outcomes for retail customers.
Payment Services Regulations 2017 · cited in 86
Governs how payment firms must handle authorised and unauthorised payments, including liability for unauthorised transactions.
FCA CONC (Consumer Credit sourcebook) · cited in 48
Conduct rules for consumer credit, including affordability and arrears handling.
Which firms lose on this
Firms with fewer than 20 decisions on this issue are excluded — the rate would not mean anything.
In the ombudsman’s words
Mrs A complains that Credit Solutions Limited gave her conflicting advice on the amount she would need to pay to settle an outstanding debt.
it’s unfair and unreasonable for NRAM to call and leave messages on the wrong number for Mrs M and Mr M.
Mr M is unhappy that Arrow didn’t implement the final decision within the timeframe given, and that it didn’t respond when he chased it up.
AMEX apologised for its poor service and said it would provide feedback to the relevant business areas on Mr L’s experience. It accepted that an error had been made in the process it had followed, and that its employee had requested the wrong information from Mr L.
Quotes are shown only where the exact wording was verified against the decision text.
The US counterpart
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) runs a separate complaint database for American consumers. We map its issue labels onto this issue ourselves — the CFPB does not — and the two datasets are not comparable: UK figures above are ombudsman decisions with an adjudicated outcome, while these are complaints made to a US regulator, most of which are never adjudicated. A count of one is not a count of the other, so no rate, percentage or ratio is calculated between them.
The CFPB recorded 37,561 complaints mapped to this issue, received between April 2025 and October 2026, across all US consumer financial products.
Most common CFPB issue labels within this mapping:
Managing an account — 37,561 complaints
Source: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, not scoped to banking — the CFPB’s complaint categories span all consumer financial products, not just banking.