Information Overload – Modern Dignity

The media is everywhere; everywhere you look you are confronted with an overload of information on a multitude of different platforms. Take for an example the news; it’s on the radio, in the papers, on the television and on your phone. You would think that it would then be impossible not to have heard about the Payment Protection Insurance or PPI scandal lately, but with the buzz of this modern day and age sometimes you switch off and miss parts of it.

There are also so many new ways of contacting people nowadays; by text, email, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Whatsapp and Viber etc plus the good old telephone call and postal system, it has made it easy to miss a message every now and again. Millions of people who may have been mis sold payment protection insurance (PPI) but have not yet complained to their bank will receive a letter inviting them to do so over the next few months¹.

These letters must be written in clear, jargon-free language, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has ordered. The watchdog said the dispatch of letters was a “key moment” in the PPI saga. Customers will need to respond to the letters to make a claim for compensation.² Bearing in mind the information overload, it is understandable to acknowledge that some people would not have heard of the PPI scandal and that some of these letters will not make it to their intended, informative destination.

Many of us receive an enormous quantity of junk mail in the post and have learnt to skim through it for bills and anything hand-written that you know is important to you. Imaginably, many of these letters won’t even be opened, meaning that many people will still not have done their PPI reclaim.

Perhaps it is a little negligent on behalf of the banks by not using a wider variety of media and multiple forms of contact in order to have a greater success rate in contacting the victim’s of PPI and fixing their wrong-doing. With the banks intending to try and enforce a deadline on consumers applying for their reclaim³, it feels like being done over again. How is it fair that after technically stealing from people, they can get away with sending one letter to cover their backs and then attempt to make it impossible to claim your own money back if you find out at a later date than most. If this is the only means of contact they use they should not be allowed to instil the deadline, people should be able to claim their own money back whenever they find out.

The banks should be doing everything in their power to join in on the information overload and make sure that everyone involved in the mis selling gets their money back, because it’s the right thing to do and they have the means in which to do so.

1 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/millions-to-get-letters-inviting-complaints-over-ppi-7542535.html

2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17269048

³ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21080468

Location – http://www.moderndignity.com/information-overload/