The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has recently complained to the industry regulator that it thinks lenders are intentionally trying to block the ombudsman procedure. It thinks that some lenders have been guilty of rejecting all consumer attempts to reclaim their loss, and in 2009 89 percent of cases of consumers' mis-sold payment protection cover seen by the FOS were found in the consumer's favour.
The financial watchdog has been fining PPI companies all over the place for not treating customers equitably, plus the Competition Commission has investigated this market sector and made a number of requests on lenders, including prohibiting sales within a week of selling a visa credit card or loans and totally prohibiting single premium plans.
Lots of ordinary folk take out unnecessary insurance cover as a consequence of their mis-sold payment protection cover which has been sold to them by devious salesmen and is merely insurance that they don't need because the product or service they bought has its own cover or they are covered by existing consumer laws or legal precedent. Another outcome is that it would be impossible to achieve the scale of loss which are described in the insurance cover.
There isn't anything the matter with Payment Protection Insurance for people who need to have it. Of course there is a place for your mis-sold payment protection cover. Its job is to provide cover for loan or card payments in the event of accident, period of sickness or time out of work. This is specially useful in the present economic situation. But if you got a Payment Protection policy from your lender, it is more than likely that you're paying very much much more than you should, so you really should first check if you can get the same deal somewhere else for less.