Complaints

Complaints

Complaints

At First Response Finance, we aim to offer you the highest standards of service, but there may be occasions when you feel dissatisfied. If so, we'll always try to resolve the problem quickly and where possible, to your satisfaction.

If you've purchased a vehicle from a dealership through our Hire Purchase service and there's an issue with the vehicle, we advise that you speak directly to the dealership in the first instance as they will usually address the issue very quickly. However, if after contacting the dealership you feel that matters remain unresolved; contact us and we will look into this further.

The steps we'll take to handle your complaint

If you're dissatisfied with any part of our service, it’s important you let us know as soon as possible. By understanding your problem, we can make sure that we're giving you the best service and are meeting our expected standards - we're members of the Finance and Leasing Association (FLA) and our procedures have been designed to meet the requirements of their lending code, as well as the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) complaint handling rules.

What you need to do

A complaint can be made in any way you wish; via letter, telephone, or email. If contacting us by telephone (0115 946 6368), please have your account information or application details to hand. Once you've submitted your complaint, a member of our Customer Experience team will look into the issue.

Just so you know... we may ask that you outline your issue in writing to help us to fully understand your concerns.

If we can't resolve your complaint straight away we will acknowledge your complaint and fully investigate the issues you have raised, aiming to resolve them as quickly as we can by speaking with you or writing to you.

The successful resolution of a complaint is important to us, so we will strive to deliver a fair decision, keeping you fully informed throughout the process. When we've come to a decision, we'll either send you our summary response letter setting out what we've found and agreed with you, or a final response stating whether we've upheld your complaint or not - we aim to do this as quickly as possible.

If you don't agree with our summary or final response, or if we are taking longer than eight weeks to resolve your complaint, you can refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) within six months of receiving our letter (and leaflet explaining this service). The Financial Ombudsman Service is both independent and impartial.

Contact information

If you have any queries about our complaints procedure, please contact our Customer Experience team.

Address

Customer Experience
First Response Finance Limited
Chetwynd Business Park
5 Regan Way, Chilwell
Nottingham
NG9 6RZ

Phone number

0115 946 6368

Email address

complaints@frfl.co.uk

Complaints information

First Response Finance Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We're happy to share information about the complaints we receive and how we handle them with our customers, as well as our regulator.

Since 14th January 2005, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), now known as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has created a series of rules about how companies like us can sell products. We take any complaint from our customers very seriously and all complaints are looked at individually and investigated thoroughly.

FCA Conduct of Business Sourcebook

FCA DISP Dispute Resolution: Complaints

The below table shows our complaints information for the period between April and September 2023.

Using a claims management company

First Response Finance is happy to accept complaints made on your behalf by a claims management company, but before a customer employs one, we would suggest that you carefully consider how much the company is likely to charge you.

Your complaint will be considered in exactly the same way regardless of whether you contact us directly or through a third-party company.

The Financial Conduct Authority has very clear rules on how Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) should be sold and how we should investigate any complaints. You don't need any specialist knowledge to complain.

The Financial Ombudsman Service is an independent arbiter that is free for consumers to use if they are unhappy with how we look at their complaints.

How we calculate and refund redress to customers is in accordance with the Financial Ombudsman Service’s guidelines, so if we find that we did something wrong, then customers who complain directly will receive a 100% refund with no fees to pay to the claims management company.

Non-insurance complaints

Most of our non-insurance complaints relate to issues with the satisfactory quality of the vehicles our customers have purchased. We understand that being without a vehicle can be very stressful and we always offer flexible solutions to get our customers back on the road as quickly as possible.

The Financial Conduct Authority has a number of useful resources for anyone involved in a complaint about the quality of goods and we recommend customers who are experiencing issues with their vehicles to read them.

We're here to help you understand vehicle finance...

First Response Finance is a responsible vehicle finance lender, and all decisions are made in the best interests of the customer; based on credit scores, status, and income at the time of application. We'll never approve an application if we believe you might struggle with repayments.

Get independent advice on money, finance products, debt management and budgeting through Citizens Advice and MoneyHelper.