COMPLAINT HANDLING PROCEDURE

Introduction

The purpose of this document is to ensure you understand that National Vehicle Solutions will endeavour to treat you fairly at all times should it become necessary for you to make a complaint against one of our advisors. Our highest priority will be to ensure a quick and satisfactory resolution to your complaint. It also outlines the procedures that we will follow whilst investigating your complaint, which are in accordance with the Financials Conduct Authority’s rules and guidelines.

Making A Complaint

We endeavour to provide you with excellent customer service however we acknowledge that in the unlikely event that you wish to raise a complaint or are dissatisfied with our service in any way you can make a complaint by any reasonable means such as telephone, email, post or in person using the following contact

details:

Telephone:
Post/In Person:
Email:

Verbal Complaints

If you have complained verbally to your Account Manager or a member of their staff, please be aware that the individual who you spoke to may not have been permitted to have a detailed conversation with you about the nature or reason for your complaint. In accordance with National Vehicle Solutions complaint handling procedures, they will have simply passed all your details to the Complaints Handler in order for your complaint to be dealt with as outlined below.

Written Complaints

If you have complained in writing, then your letter and any associated documentation will have been passed to the Complaints Handler as outlined below.

We will deal with complaints received in any form including email. However please be aware that email is not a secure form of correspondence and is equivalent to an open post card. Please avoid putting personal information such as bank details in an email. In order to avoid the risk of identity theft through email we will normally only correspond with you in relation to complaints via ordinary post.

Complaint Handling Procedure

We try to resolve complaints as soon as possible. Should we resolve your complaint by the close of the third business day following the day on which we receive your complaint, we will issue you with a written communication called a summary resolution communication acknowledging that you made a complaint and setting out that the complaint has been resolved. It will make you aware of your right to refer the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service should you be dissatisfied with our resolution. Should a further (or new) complaint arise from you, or we are not able to resolve the complaint by the close of the third business day, it will be logged and dealt with as follows:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Where we need more time to resolve a complaint, or a further complaint is received, we will send you a written or electronic acknowledgement to you within five business days of receipt, outlining our understanding of the complaint points and identifying the individual handling the complaint.

THIRD PARTY COMPLAINTS

If your complaint solely relates to a third party such as a funder, we will forward your complaint to that third party that we believe is solely responsible for your complaint. We will send you an acknowledgment letter within 5 working days to inform you of this which will include the third parties’ details and their complaints handling procedure and how they will address your complaint. If we are jointly responsible with a third party for the complaint, we will issue you an acknowledgment within 5 working days and inform you of how we will investigate your complaint and the timescales of which we have to address your complaint.

COMPLAINTS INVESTIGATION

The Complaints Handler will investigate the subject matter of the complaint and, where required, may contact you to obtain further information to investigate the complaint. We will ensure that the individual(s) involved in investigating complaints are independent and have not been involved in the events complained about (where possible).

The nature of the investigation will depend on the nature of the complaint but may involve reviewing internal records and reviewing all communications with you. The Complaints Handler will assess whether the complaint should be upheld or rejected, and whether remedial action is necessary. We will keep you informed of the progress of your complaint. If we have been unable to resolve your complaint within 4 weeks, we will write to you again to explain why our investigation is still in progress and to let you know that we will be in touch again within at least the next 2 weeks.

We will endeavour to issue a final response to you within eight weeks of receiving your complaints. This will be considered our ’final response’ which will be a written response that either:

(a) Accepts the complaint and where appropriate, offers redress or remedial action (appropriate redress

will not always involve financial redress); or

(b) Offers redress or remedial action without accepting the complaint; or

(d) Informs you if you are not satisfied with our response, you may refer your complaint to the Financial

Ombudsman Service) by letter, email or telephone and which:

(i)Encloses a copy of the Financial Ombudsman standard explanatory leaflet.

(ii) Provides the website address of the Financial Ombudsman Service

(iii) Indicates that we waive the relevant time limits (where relevant)

If a complaint is not resolved after eight weeks, we will explain in writing why we are not in a position to make a final response and indicate when we expect to be able to provide a final response. You have the right to refer to the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service at this point, full contact details will be provided to you. You can obtain further information relating to this service at www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk . In either case you must refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service within six months of the date of our letter.

We are a member of the BVRLA, you may wish to contact these who also provide a free conciliation service, further information can be found here

Updated May 23 V3