Blog: PPI Pleasures

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Like every living sentient creature in this country I have spent the past few years hearing about PPI flipping EVERYWHERE. It's so omnipresent in spam emails, spam phone calls, adverts and newspaper articles that GDPR came as something of a BLESSED RELIEF!

I had always been a bit sniffy about the whole business, taking the line that surely you would KNOW if you had taken out PPI and did not need all these people telling you about it. "It only applies to twits and wallies who can't manage their money," I thought, "I am sure it wouldn't be me!"

HOWEVER, a few weeks ago somebody on Facebook (I can't remember who and can't find it now!) mentioned that they'd gone onto their bank's own PPI checker page, spent about half an hour putting in their details, and had received enough CA$H to get, as they put it "some nice bottles of wine." "Hang on," I thought, "I like nice bottles of wine AND have half an hour spare. Maybe I should have a go!"

THUS I went onto Barclay's PPI Page and filled in a few details so that they could check whether I'd ever been mis-sold PPI. I was entirely sure that a) I wouldn't have ever been so daft to do so and anyway b) would remember if I had, so imagine my surprise when I received a letter a few weeks later saying I HAD had a PPI policy, for ELEVEN YEARS from 1998 to 2009!!

"Oh yeah, I guess I did take out a loan didn't I?" I thought. "Yes," said my BRANE. "You got it to put out your half of the Clubbing In The Week single!" AHA!

The letter said that I now needed to put in a proper CLAIM, to check whether I had been MIS-sold, rather than just sold, it, which did involve a bit of research - it turns out there IS a point to keeping piles of old payslips from twenty years ago! I typed it all in, pressed send, and then expected to wait AGES to be told that it had all been entirely above board. THUS when I got back from Bournemouth and found I'd had a letter from Barclays saying "We have received your complaint, it'll probably take ages to process" I was not surprised.

Imagine then my GLEE when I opened ANOTHER letter in the same pile of correspondence which said that my complaint had been UPHELD, and that they were going to give me a load of CA$H! All right, not a life-changing amount by any means, but CERTAINLY enough for some very nice wine and maybe a bottle of whisky too! It turns out that me not really paying attention to what I was signing back in the last century was the BEST INVESTMENT I have ever made!

I tell you this not to GLOAT over my good fortune - though as it is purely at the expense of THE MAN I think some gloating is fine in moderation - but to advise you, gentle reader, to have a go yourself. There is only about a YEAR to go to make these sort of enquiries, and as it only takes a few minutes to do the initial enquiry it is WELL worth a go. You don't need to go through an agency or talk to anybody on the phone or anything, apparently THE BANKS have to make it as easy as possible so they're all supposed to have dedicated sections on their websites where you can just do it yourself. All you need is GOOGLE basically. It's peasy - have a go!

posted 3/7/2018 by MJ Hibbett

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