Successful complaints
Our web site has helped thousands of people put together a complaint about being mis-sold an endowment mortgage, and get redress.
Our web site has helped thousands of people put together a complaint about being mis-sold an endowment mortgage, and get redress.
Here are extracts from just a few of the letters and emails we've received.
"Dear wonderful people at Which?
"I've been a member of your organisation for some time, and often have used info from the magazine to good effect. I read the magazine on endowment policy mis-selling at the end of last year [2002]. After taking your advice, I complained to my policy company and by mid-February I received a cheque for just over £15,000!!"
"We have been very concerned about our endowment mortgage, and were very grateful for the information we were able to download from your excellent website.
"We had been going through every aspect of our situation for several months and found your information most valuable. We used the basic format of your letter of complaint, adding our specific details, with the result that we have received compensation for the difference between our endowment and that of a repayment mortgage. We have received a cheque for £6504.53, which we are going to use in an Isa to run with the mortgage, and convert part to repayment.
"We would like to thank you and your team for this. We did not know how to tackle our complaint effectively without the information provided by Which?"
"Thanks to advice from Which? my wife and I have obtained a significant financial settlement on three endowments attached to mortgage repayments. The endowments were 'not performing' and as the future looked bleak, we decided that it was time to cash them in and change to a repayment mortgage.
"Having read in Which? about mis-sold endowments, we realised that we were not given 'best advice' when they were sold to us. We used your standard format letter, filling in the blanks, and sent our complaint to Prudential and Lincoln Assurance who had taken over Scottish Amicable, the company who sold us our 1991 endowment. In short, in addition to the current endowment surrender value, we accepted compensation of approximately £2,500 from Prudential, while Lincoln settled at almost £8,500.
"This compensation only brings us in line with payments that we would have made if we had a repayment mortgage, but we would like to thank Which? for making the process so easy for us all because of the standard letter you produced.
People who are thinking about walking away from their underperforming endowments should at least complain - they might be surprised at what can be achieved."
"We just wanted to thank you so much for your help in making a complaint regarding the endowment we were mis-sold in 1992.
"We followed your guidelines step-by-step, which made it a fairly easy process. We had the complaint upheld in our favour and were awarded a total of £15,070 which we have now paid towards our mortgage! The complaint was not something we were planning to do (even though we thought we might have a case) because of the effort and hassle involved, but you made it so easy that we went ahead. We're so glad we did and feel very satisfied with being members of Which?.
Thanks again and keep campaigning!"