Not upheld: service failure and account restrictions complaint against Tide Platform Ltd

Decision detail

Summary

Mr P, director of company C, requested a payment transfer from C's Tide business account that was declined due to transactional limits. After opening multiple chats, the limit was increased within approximately five hours, but by then the payment had been returned. Mr P complained about the transactional limit, service quality, and lack of telephone support. The ombudsman found that Tide correctly applied its disclosed transactional limits and processed the increase request within a reasonable timeframe, and that telephone support was not a feature of the basic account tier. No remedy was awarded as the complainant is a Limited Company incapable of suffering distress, and the inconvenience was experienced by the director personally.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that Tide correctly applied its transactional limits which were clearly set out in the terms and conditions, and therefore the rejection of the transfer was not a mistake. The ombudsman noted that a five-hour timeframe for assessing and processing a limit increase request was reasonable. Regarding the service aspect, the ombudsman found that Tide was not wrong to withhold phone support from a basic account tier, as the customer was receiving the service they were paying for. The ombudsman acknowledged that while the director experienced stress, this stress was not caused by any error on Tide's part.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website