A small rise against a much larger fall
The uphold rate for Section 75 goods and services complaints rose by 3.8 percentage points in the most recent 90-day window, from 13.3% to 17.1%, according to Veste's analysis of published Financial Ombudsman decisions. On the surface that looks like a shift back in consumers' favour. Set against the wider trend, it looks more like a small rebound partway down a long staircase.
The current window covered 1,103 decisions, against 1,601 in the prior window, a fall of 498 decisions, or 31.1%. Both windows meet Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not resting on a handful of cases. But a 3.8 percentage point move on a base that has fallen from 41.2% in 2024 to 14.4% so far in 2026 is a different story to a recovery.
The headline numbers
Across the full corpus of Section 75 goods and services decisions analysed, Veste recorded 19,785 decisions in total, of which 6,334 were upheld, 1,440 partially upheld and 12,011 not upheld, giving an overall uphold rate of 35.7% across the whole period from 2013-04-02 to 2026-06-12. That headline rate blends more than a decade of decisions and sits well above the current 90-day rate of 17.1%, underlining how far the recent pattern has diverged from the long-run average for this claim type.
For context, the uphold rate across the entire Veste corpus of Financial Ombudsman decisions, covering every product and claim type, is 28.8%. The current 17.1% rate for Section 75 goods and services claims sits below that broader baseline, while the historic 35.7% average for this claim type sits above it.
What the monthly series shows
The monthly trend, covering 25 months from June 2024 to June 2026, tells a clearer story than the two-window comparison alone. Uphold rates ran in the high 30s and low-to-mid 40s per cent through the second half of 2024 and into early 2025: 39.9% in June 2024, 40.4% in July 2024, rising to 46.4% in August 2024, and still at 46.5% in March 2025. From there the rate began sliding. By September 2025 it had fallen to 33.1%, then 31.8% in October, 33.6% in November.
The steepest drop came over the winter. December 2025 saw the uphold rate fall to 19.7% on 471 decisions, the highest monthly volume in the series to that point. January 2026 fell further to 14.5% on 557 decisions, and February 2026 recorded the lowest point in the series, 10.4%, on 570 decisions. March 2026 brought the highest monthly volume of the whole 25-month run, 690 decisions, with the uphold rate at 13.2%.
April, May and June 2026 show a partial recovery in both the rate and a fall in volume: 17.1% on 228 decisions in April, 20.8% on 313 decisions in May, and 16.9% on 195 decisions in June (a partial month, given the article's publication date of 14 June 2026). The 3.8 percentage point rise in the period comparison reflects this recent uptick, not a return to the levels seen in 2024 or early 2025.
The longer-term picture by year
The annual figures make the scale of the shift plainer still. In 2022 the uphold rate for Section 75 goods and services claims stood at 36.3% across 1,782 decisions. It was 36.1% in 2023 (1,490 decisions) and rose to 41.2% in 2024 (1,609 decisions), the highest annual rate in this five-year run. In 2025 it fell to 34.6% across 2,723 decisions, and for 2026 so far it stands at 14.4% across 2,553 decisions, already a larger volume than any full prior year in the series bar 2025.
That year-on-year comparison shows a claim type that saw rising decision volumes and, until 2024, a broadly stable or rising uphold rate, followed by a sharp fall in the rate from 2025 into 2026 even as volumes continued to climb. The 90-day uptick sits inside that 2026 figure, not apart from it.
Firm mix: wide variation, but named individually
Veste's top ten firms by decision volume for this claim type show considerable spread in uphold rates, and it is worth noting that firms are counted by the name recorded on each decision, so subsidiaries of the same banking group appear as separate entries rather than being combined.
Shawbrook Bank Limited recorded the largest volume, 1,624 decisions, with an uphold rate of 15.6% (232 upheld, 43 partially upheld, 1,349 not upheld). Clydesdale Financial Services Limited followed with 1,017 decisions and an 18.2% uphold rate. Black Horse Limited, with 657 decisions, recorded a 35.6% uphold rate, closer to the historic average for the claim type as a whole.
At the other end of the range, Mitsubishi HC Capital UK Plc recorded the lowest uphold rate among the top ten, 9.0% across 634 decisions (50 upheld, 14 partially upheld, 570 not upheld). Volkswagen Financial Services (UK) Limited, by contrast, recorded a 41.8% uphold rate across 612 decisions, and Tesco Personal Finance PLC recorded 40.3% across 555 decisions.
The widest gap sits with the smaller-volume names in the top ten. Creation Consumer Finance Ltd recorded a 71.2% uphold rate across 533 decisions, the highest in this list, while Santander Consumer (UK) Plc recorded 59.8% across 480 decisions and Close Brothers Limited 54.3% across 476 decisions. Moneybarn No. 1 Limited recorded 41.3% across 465 decisions.
These figures describe published Ombudsman decisions involving each named entity, not a verdict on the entity's overall complaint handling or wider business conduct. The gap between, say, Mitsubishi HC Capital's 9.0% and Creation Consumer Finance's 71.2% is large, but it reflects the specific decisions published for each firm in this claim category, not a like-for-like ranking of service quality.
What might be driving the fall, and what remains interpretation
The evidence supports a clear observation: uphold rates for Section 75 goods and services claims fell sharply from late 2025 into early 2026, alongside a rise in monthly decision volumes to levels not seen earlier in the 25-month series (peaking at 690 decisions in March 2026, against 69 in June 2024). Whether higher volumes and lower uphold rates are connected is a question the supplied data cannot answer definitively. A larger pool of published decisions could include a higher proportion of weaker claims, or could simply reflect a backlog being cleared, or something else again. Correlation between rising volume and falling uphold rate is visible in the series; the data does not establish which, if anything, caused which.
The most recent three months (April, May, June 2026) show volumes falling back from the March 2026 peak while the uphold rate ticked up from 13.2% in March to a range of 16.9% to 20.8%. That is consistent with either a genuine change in the mix of claims being decided, or with ordinary month-to-month variation on samples that, while individually meeting Veste's minimum threshold, are far smaller than the annual totals.
Individual decisions as illustration
Veste's dataset includes several individual decisions published around the current period that illustrate the range of issues arising under Section 75 rather than proving any broader pattern. In one case (DRN-6209332), a hire purchase customer's complaint against MotoNovo Finance Limited over a faulty gear selector was upheld after the Ombudsman found the four months taken to attempt repair exceeded a reasonable time under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, entitling the customer to reject the car and receive a refund with interest.
Other recent decisions were not upheld. A complaint against American Express Services Europe Limited (DRN-6223914) over a rejected Section 75 and chargeback claim relating to a locksmith's charges was not upheld, with the Ombudsman finding insufficient evidence of misrepresentation. Two separate complaints involving timeshare financing, one against Clydesdale Financial Services Limited trading as Barclays Partner Finance (DRN-6425696) and one against Mitsubishi HC Capital UK PLC (DRN-6425264), were also not upheld, in both cases because the Ombudsman found the credit relationship was not unfair under Section 140A and, in the Clydesdale case, because the claim was time-barred under the Limitation Act 1980.
These cases show the range of subject matter within Section 75 disputes, from motor faults to travel-related purchases and timeshare financing. They are illustrations of how individual decisions are reasoned, not evidence of a trend in either direction.
Where Section 75 sits against other products
Section 75 goods and services claims can be compared with other Veste-tracked categories, though these are different claim types and not a breakdown of the same complaints. Motor finance (PCP/HP) claims show a 49.7% uphold rate across 9,013 decisions, and home insurance shows 51.9% across 54 decisions, both higher than the current or historic Section 75 goods and services rate. Personal loan claims sit at 25.6% across 4,698 decisions, credit card claims at 23.1% across 4,333 decisions, and current account claims at 9.0% across 105 decisions, all below the historic 35.7% Section 75 average. Buy-now-pay-later claims stand at 28.3% across 76 decisions.
What the data does and does not tell us
The supplied data shows a documented fall in the uphold rate for Section 75 goods and services decisions from a peak of 46.5% in March 2025 to a low of 10.4% in February 2026, followed by a partial recovery to a range around 17% to 21% in the most recent three months, and a 3.8 percentage point rise in the latest 90-day comparison window. It shows this alongside a substantial rise in monthly decision volumes into early 2026, and a subsequent fall in volume in the most recent months.
What it does not show is the reason for either the fall or the partial recovery. It does not show whether the mix of firms, products or issue types referred to the Ombudsman changed materially, beyond what is visible in the top ten firms list. It does not show complaint volumes at the firms themselves, only the subset that reached a published Ombudsman decision, and published decisions are not the same population as all complaints made to a firm.
The practical implication
For anyone tracking this claim type, the headline figure of a 3.8 percentage point rise deserves the context that sits around it. It follows a much larger fall from levels above 40% in 2024 to below 15% in early 2026, and it comes on a sample that, while meeting Veste's minimum threshold, is a fraction of the volumes seen at the peak of the recent surge in decisions. The more durable finding in this data is not the recent uptick but the scale of the longer decline, and the wide variation in uphold rates between individual firms handling Section 75 claims, which is worth watching in subsequent quarters rather than reading as settled.