Less than 1% of complaints made to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) last year were rejected for being frivolous, the organisation said.
Of the 164,899 complaints it settled last year, it concluded that 1,447 cases, or 0.9%, could be categorised as “frivolous and vexatious”.
In these cases, the Ombudsman does not charge a case fee to the business complained about.
However the FOS said a decision not to uphold a consumer’s complaint does not mean the case was frivolous and vexatious.
“Consumers can sometimes pursue complaints in an unfocused way and this may make them appear unreasonable to the business they complain to,” the FOS said.
However the consumer watchdog said businesses can aggravate problems that might have been resolved with a clear, helpful and sympathetic explanation by responding to customer concerns “unhelpfully and defensively”.
