Complaints

What to do if you have a complaint

A Father’s Friend is committed to providing a high-quality support service to all our clients. When something goes wrong, we need to address the problem and your concerns. In the first instance, it may be helpful to contact the member(s) of the company acting for you. Naturally, they will do their best to resolve any issues.

If you wish to make a formal complaint, then you may do so in accordance with our Complaints Policy. Making a complaint will not affect our instructions and the services we provide to you, though it may cause a conflict. This is explained in our Complaints Policy.

What to do if we cannot resolve your complaint

We will deal with your complaint in accordance with our Complaints Policy. Usually, this will involve seeking to resolve the matter with you commercially or our investigating your complaint and our issuing you with our findings in the form of a complaint determination letter. Our complaint determination letter will contain the results of our investigation and explain what further steps you can take. If we do not do this, or if we do but not to your satisfaction, then subject to scheme rules, you may approach the Legal Ombudsman within six months of receiving our complaint determination letter, or if we fail to respond to you, within eight weeks of our receipt of your complaint. 

Before accepting a complaint for investigation, the Legal Ombudsman will check that you are eligible to make use of its services, that you have tried to resolve your complaint with us first and that it is able to make a determination on the matter about which you are complaining.

What will happen once we have received your complaint?

1. We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within three working days of our receipt of the complaint, enclosing a copy of this Complaints Policy.

2. We will start to investigate your complaint. This will normally involve passing your complaint to an appropriate person in our Operations and Compliance Team, who will review your matter file and speak to the relevant individual(s), including those named in the complaint.

3. Where we believe a telephone conversation could assist in resolving the complaint, then, within eight working days of receiving your complaint, we will endeavour to resolve your complaint by agreement over the telephone.

4. Where we speak with you on the telephone and are unable to resolve your complaint by agreement within eight working days or where we do not believe a telephone conversation would be appropriate, then within eight weeks of receiving your complaint, we will write to you with our findings, which may include a suggested solution where appropriate.

5. We will endeavour to provide our final determination letter within eight weeks of receiving your complaint to us.

6. Finally, please note that where it is reasonable to do so, we may increase some of the timescales detailed above. If this is the case, then we will inform you in writing and we shall provide a reasonable explanation as to why we have extended the time periods. Examples of such explanations include where you have multiple complaints that all need to be investigated, or where it takes longer than anticipated to contact an important witness whose evidence is necessary for our investigation.

In the event that you are not satisfied with the company’s response, or if we do not resolve your complaint within eight weeks of your contacting us, then the Legal Ombudsman may be able to consider your complaint. There are, however, restrictions to this service, as set out on the Ombudsman’s website (see below).

If you wish to contact the Legal Ombudsman, you should contact them within six months of the date of our sending to you our final resolution letter. In addition, you should be aware that the Legal Ombudsman will not accept your complaint if:

• more than six years have elapsed from the date of the act or omission giving rise to the complaint; or

• more than three years have elapsed from the time when you should have known about the complaint; or

• the date of the act or omission giving rise to the complaint was before 6 October 2010.

For further information, you can write to the Legal Ombudsman at PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WJ or at enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk.

You can telephone them on 0300 555 0333.