The complaint numbers are falling. The uphold rate went up.

This week the Financial Ombudsman Service published its first quarter figures for 2026/27: 53,600 new complaints between April and June, against 68,000 in the same quarter a year ago. The service now expects around 199,000 complaints across the full year, down from roughly 306,000 in 2024/25.

Ofcom's Q1 2026 telecoms data tells the same story in a different sector. Broadband complaints hit their lowest level since records began, an average of six per hundred thousand customers.

Read together, those two datasets look like good news about how British companies are treating people. They are not. Both of them measure how many people escalated. Neither measures how many people were wronged.

The number that moved the other way

Buried in the same FOS release is a figure that goes in the opposite direction. Of the cases the ombudsman resolved in the quarter, 26 per cent were upheld. Strip out motor finance commission cases, which have been washing through the system in enormous volume and closing out, and the uphold rate across all products was 30 per cent.

So the number of complaints fell by a fifth year on year, and the share of complaints that were found to have merit rose.

That is what happens when the population of complainants changes. The volume line and the uphold line are answering different questions. Volume answers "how many people escalated". Uphold answers "of the people who escalated and saw it through, how many were right". Only the second one tells you anything about your own case.

What actually changed

Two things happened at once, and they are worth separating.

Motor finance commission complaints, most of them brought in bulk by claims management companies, came to the end of their run at the ombudsman. That is a one-off volume effect, and FOS says so directly. At the same time the economics of bulk referral changed: since 1st April 2025 FOS has charged professional representatives £250 to refer a case. A charging regime does not stop meritorious complaints. It stops the marginal ones, the speculative ones, and the ones filed at scale on the assumption that a fraction will land.

Ofcom's record low has its own asterisk, and ISPreview was right to flag it. The Ofcom series counts complaints made to Ofcom. It does not count complaints made to the provider, and it does not count complaints that went to an ADR scheme such as CISAS or the Communications Ombudsman. The floor of that series is a floor on how many people took the trouble to complain to a regulator most of them have never heard of.

Then there is the largest consumer redress exercise currently running in the UK, which will appear in none of these statistics at all. Under the FCA's motor finance consumer redress scheme (PS26/3), firms handling Scheme 2 agreements have until 30th September 2026 to tell each consumer whether they are owed money and how much. The consumer then has one month, to 31st October, to accept or challenge, with payment due by November. Billions of pounds in redress will move through a scheme, not through the complaints figures. Volume falls. Money still moves.

What the decisions look like up close

The ombudsman published a batch of decisions dated 21st July that became visible this week. Ten of them, nine not upheld. Five were banking and payments cases, and three of those five were authorised push payment scam complaints: one against National Westminster Bank (DRN-6499258), one against Monzo (DRN-6453544), one against Barclays (DRN-6453455). All three lost.

That matters because the Payment Systems Regulator's mandatory reimbursement regime is supposed to make APP fraud reimbursement close to automatic. A payment service provider must reimburse an APP fraud victim up to £85,000 unless the customer acted fraudulently or with gross negligence. Three people in one publication batch pushed a refusal all the way to an ombudsman decision and did not get it overturned.

You will never see that in a volume statistic. You would see it immediately in a per-category uphold rate, if anyone published one at that granularity.

The practical version

I have run eight disputes across eight industries, several of them for someone I hold a deputyship for. Not one of them was helped by a national complaint volume figure. What would have helped, every single time, was knowing the strike rate on cases that looked like mine.

So when you are deciding whether a dispute is worth another six weeks of your life, the question is not whether complaints are rising or falling. It is:

What proportion of cases like mine, that reached a decision, were upheld? For financial services the honest current answer is roughly three in ten, excluding motor finance. That is a real number and it is better than most people assume.

Is there a scheme running that bypasses the complaint route entirely? If your dispute is motor finance commission, there is, and the clock on it is short. An offer landing in late September gives you until 31st October to challenge it. Doing nothing is a decision.

Is my sector's complaint statistic measuring complaints, or measuring escalations to a particular body? If it is the second, a record low tells you about the cost of complaining, not about the conduct of the companies.

Falling complaint counts get reported as a story about companies behaving better. Usually they are a story about how expensive, slow or obscure it has become to complain. Those are not the same thing, and only one of them should change what you do next.

Also worth your time this week

A deadline-heavy week. Two of the items below have dates on them that fall inside the next four weeks, and both of them put the ball in the consumer's court rather than the company's.

• Motor finance redress: the Scheme 2 clock starts on 30th September. Under the FCA's motor finance consumer redress scheme, firms handling Scheme 2 agreements (loans starting between 1st April 2014 and 1st November 2024) must confirm by 30th September 2026 whether you are owed money and how much. You then have one month, until 31st October, to accept or challenge the offer, with payment due by November. If an offer arrives and you sit on it, you can be timed out of disputing it. FCA PS26/3.
• The Consumer Duty consultation closes on 18th September. CP26/23 proposes clarifying the Duty's scope and narrowing its territorial reach so it applies only where the customer normally lives in the UK. Final rules are expected early next year. FCA CP26/23.
• Ombudsman complaint volumes fell, uphold rates did not. FOS received 53,600 new complaints between April and June 2026, against 68,000 in the same quarter last year. It upheld 26 per cent of resolved cases, or 30 per cent once motor finance commission cases are excluded. FOS quarterly data.
• FCA moves to ban a pension transfer adviser and fine him £742,700. The regulator found Daniel Thomas of DPT Financial Solutions recklessly advised 53 clients on 63 defined benefit transfers without the required qualification, including four British Steel Pension Scheme members. The findings are provisional; he has referred the case to the Upper Tribunal. FCA press release.
• Bullying and harassment became a conduct rule breach on 1st September. New rule COCON 1.1.7FR extends the FCA conduct rules at non-banking authorised firms to serious work-related misconduct. If your employer is FCA-authorised, a grievance now has a regulatory dimension as well as an employment one. FCA PS25/23.
• Broadband complaints hit a record low, with a caveat. Ofcom logged an average of six complaints per hundred thousand customers in Q1 2026, with TalkTalk most complained about and Plusnet among the least. The series counts only complaints made to Ofcom, not those made to the provider or to an ADR scheme.
• The Law Commission wants to hear about consumer class actions. Its law reform project is open for stakeholder input until 30th October 2026, with a consultation paper to follow. Pinsent Masons summary.
• Collective settlements keep under-delivering. The Competition Appeal Tribunal approved a £200m settlement in Merricks v Mastercard against a claim once valued near £14bn, and in Boundary Fares under 1 per cent of the first £25m distribution was claimed.
• Worth reclaiming this week. MoneySavingExpert covered school uniform grants of up to £200 from councils, tax overpaid on summer jobs, and one reader who reclaimed £240 in underpaid holiday pay. Holiday pay underpayment is one of the easiest employment claims to evidence, and one of the least chased.

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