Link Financial Complaints: The Route and What Gets Upheld

What makes a Link complaint different from most is further down this page: the ombudsman has held Link responsible not just for its own collection conduct but for the original lending behind a debt it bought.

Work out which Link name is on your letter

Link operates through more than one company, and the letterhead does not always make the relationship obvious. Link Financial Outsourcing Limited (company number 07059696) is the firm authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, under firm reference 606817, and it is the entity that corresponds with customers and handles complaints. The debts themselves are often owned by a row of numbered purchase companies called Asset Link Capital, all registered at the same London address, so paperwork can describe the sender as Link Financial Outsourcing Limited trading as Asset Link Capital with a number in brackets.

For a complaint, the number in brackets changes nothing. Whichever Asset Link company owns the account, the complaint goes to Link Financial Outsourcing, because that is the regulated firm doing the collecting.

Putting the complaint to Link

Link publishes a dedicated complaints route: its Complaints and Dispute Resolution Team takes complaints by post at PO Box 107, Caerphilly CF83 3GG, by phone on 03330 145 145, and by email. Quote the account reference, set out the events in date order with any evidence, and state the outcome you want, whether that is a corrected balance, an amended credit file, or the account closed.

Under FCA rules the firm then has up to eight weeks to issue its final response, and that letter must tell you about the ombudsman referral right and the six month window that starts on its date.

What the ombudsman has actually done with Link complaints

The Financial Ombudsman Service publishes its decisions, and the published record on Link is worth knowing before you decide whether escalating is worthwhile. In one upheld case, a borrower complained to Link, as the owner of a loan bought from the original lender, that the loan should never have been granted at all. The ombudsman agreed the lending was irresponsible and ordered Link to refund any overpayments with interest, remove the adverse entries from the borrower's credit file, and agree an affordable plan for anything still owing.

The principle matters more than the case. When a regulated debt is sold, the right to complain about the original lending decision can travel with it, so you do not need to hunt down a lender that may have left the market. The complaint about an unaffordable loan, a mis-sold card or a wrongly recorded default can be put to Link as the debt's current owner, and the ombudsman can order Link to put it right.

Grounds that tend to carry weight

• A demand for payment on an account with no payment or written acknowledgment for over six years, where section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980 may make it statute-barred, pressed without the limitation point being answered.
• A regulated credit agreement chased while a section 77 or 78 request under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 sits unanswered, which suspends enforcement until the paperwork is provided.
• A default on your credit file with the wrong date, a balance that changed unexplained after the sale, or no notice of assignment telling you the debt had moved.
• The original loan or card itself, where the lending looks unaffordable on what the lender knew or should have checked at the time.
• Collection that pressed on after you disclosed a vulnerability or raised a genuine dispute.

Put the strongest ground first and keep the letter factual. If the complaint reaches the ombudsman, the file you built at this stage is the file that gets read.

A complaint runs alongside a claim, not instead of one

Complaining to Link does not suspend a County Court claim, so if a claim form has arrived, respond to it within its own deadline whatever stage the complaint has reached. Link has no enforcement powers of its own before a judgment, and enforcement agents only enter the picture after a court process with paperwork at every step. The Link Financial profile covers those powers, and if agents are already involved, that is a separate ladder covered in how to complain about a bailiff. For help weighing a complaint against a limitation defence or a settlement, get in touch.