Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis has advised people not to wait until the PPI deadline before submitting a claim.
Applications to reclaim mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance can be made online until 11.59pm Thursday, but the TV finance guru is urging people not to leave it until the last-minute.
Mr Lewis, founder of consumer website MoneySavingExpert.com (MSE), has warned applicants to put in a claim as soon as possible if they think they could qualify for compensation.
MoneySavingExpert.com, has created its new PPI Emergency Reclaim Kit, focusing only on the minimum consumers must do to stop the door being slammed shut if they are due money, and haven’t done anything about it yet.
As long as consumers start a claim before the deadline, it can proceed as normal and still be escalated later to the free Financial Ombudsman Service. After the deadline, the only route to reclaim will be the much more difficult option of going to court.
Mr Lewis said: “Thankfully in most cases, banks have agreed that even just checking if you had PPI counts as starting a complaint.
“If you’re not sure, just fill in the details anyway and check if you had PPI. I'm not encouraging you to make a spurious claim, more to just get in over the line, and buy yourself more time to find out if you are due money later. If not, simply don't proceed any further later.
“You don’t need to pay a firm to do this for you – you can do it yourself for free. The easiest way is to use the free MSE tool.
"Or you can check directly with a bank – if so ask it for written confirmation that your enquiry has been submitted to make sure your claim has been triggered.
"If it’s on the phone or in person, make a note of the name of who you spoke to, the time of the call and ask them to assure you that your claim is triggered. Then email it to yourself so you have a time stamped contemporaneous note.”
Anyone who has ever had a credit card, mortgage, loan, overdraft, catalogue debt, car finance or a store card, should urgently check if they had PPI.
