It’s been said there are only 3 ways to increase your revenue:
- Sell more of your product or service to existing customers / clients
- Increase your prices
- Increase the number of customers / clients you serve
For many people in the UK — possibly you — there’s also another way of receiving a cash injection. And that’s by getting back money on financial products that you were mis-sold.
Unless you avoid all forms of media, you’ll have undoubtedly heard of the payment protection insurance (PPI) scandal. Millions of people were mis-sold the product by their banks and other financial institutions.
One big problem is that many victims of the scandal aren’t even aware that they are victims. How come? Because PPI was often tagged on to finance agreements without the customer’s knowledge.
If this happened to you, you may have been paying out money every month for something that was useless to you. If so, you are entitled to get back all your money, plus an additional 8% in compensation.
Be warned, though. The FCA will be imposing a deadline for claiming PPI soon, after which you’ll only have 2 years to claim.
Yes, 2 years seems like a long time to get your claim started, but they’ll pass by quicker than you probably realise.
When you consider that the floodgates to the scandal opened in April 2011 — almost 5 years ago — it becomes easier to see how another 2 years is no time at all.
What You Should Do Now
If you know you have PPI and you believe it was mis-sold, the next step is simple: start your claim. You can either claim by yourself or you can hand your claim over to a professional claims company. More on that in a moment.
If you’re not sure whether you have PPI, the first thing to do is to find out. It’s been said before but it’s worth repeating: PPI was routinely added on to finance agreements without the customer’s knowledge.
For example, the salesperson may have ticked the box indicating PPI was requested when in fact you had no idea the box was being ticked.
To find out if you have PPI, you’ll either need to go through all your records if you still have them or you’ll need to run a credit check if you don’t.
There are various services for running a credit check. Noddle.co.uk is one such service and it’s free to use. Sign up for the service, follow the instructions and download your report.
Then go through the report carefully and look for any instances of PPI. If you find any PPI, think back to the sale and try to recall if you asked for it or if it was offered to you or not.
If you don’t recall asking for it or being offered it, start your claim.
How To Claim
You can handle your own claim if you wish; you don’t have to use a professional claims company to claim for you. It’s really a matter of weighing up both options and deciding which suits you best.
If you use a professional company, you will pay a fee but you’ll also avoid a lot of the time and work involved because they’ll take on the day to day handling of your claim.
Whichever option you choose, just make sure of one thing: get your claim underway before the deadline sneaks up on you and prevents you from claiming at all.