Have you suffered problems with a bank or financial firm? Our new campaign - Moneywise Fights For Your Rights - aims to help you get your money back.

You’d think that with customer trust in banks and other financial firms pretty much at an all-time low, firms would be fighting to get back in consumers’ good books. But it seems that despite widespread promises to put customers first, many firms just aren’t delivering the service we expect or deserve. 

Nearly nine million complaints were made against financial firms between 2006 and 2008, mainly driven by grievances against current accounts and mis-sold mortgage endowments.

In 2008, the year the credit crunch really took the UK in its jaws, nearly three million complaints were lodged with the Financial Services Authority (FSA), just under two million of which related to banks.

That’s not to say that all firms are letting their customers down. Earlier this year, Moneywise conducted some extensive research to find out which companies you think provide good customer service and value for money. We received more than 10,000 responses, making the Moneywise Customer Service Awards 2009 the UK’s largest dedicated survey of customer service performance among financial companies.

While the aims of Moneywise’s Customer Service Awards were to reward excellence and find the companies you trust the most, along the way they also discovered which firms simply don’t cut the mustard when it comes to customer service.

But there was more to complaints that just rude call centre staff or long queues in branches. Our ‘name and shame bad customer service’ forum reveals many of you continue to suffer serious problems when it comes to financial firms.

While customers complain to the firm in question, many find their effort is fruitless. The FSA’s figures reveal that 5.4 million complaints were rejected between 2006 and 2008. Of these, just 6% of people pursued the issue with the Financial Ombudsman Service.

The Ombudsman offers a free and impartial service to help settle disputes between consumers and financial firms. It finds in favour of the consumer in around one third of the disputes it settles, rising to 84% when it comes to current accounts and 79% for credit card complaints.

However, the Ombudsman is not a consumer champion and there is no guarantee it will find in your favour. Even if it does, it may take weeks or even months for the issue to be settled. And that’s after you’ve exhausted the firm in question’s complaints process.

For many of us, the effort involved either isn’t worth it or is simply too demanding on our busy lives.

That’s where Moneywise wants to help. We get bundles and letters and emails from readers who have suffered from problems with their bank, credit card provider or insurer. A few calls on our part tend to get the problem sorted sooner than it might take if you followed the traditional route.

But we can do more. That is why we are launching a new campaign called Moneywise Fights For Your Rights. 

All you need to do is fill in our interactive contact form explaining the problem you’ve encountered and we will put out all the stops to try and get it sorted as soon as possible.

Make sure you include your full name, daytime telephone number and postal address. You’ll also need to include a note giving the firm in question permission to speak to Moneywise. But please don’t send any original documents as we cannot take legal responsibility for these.

Click here to go to the Moneywise Fights For Your Rights campaign page

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