The short answer
Count from the date you complained. When the waiting period for your sector passes — eight weeks for most things, six for phone and broadband, fifteen business days for payment complaints — you can go to the ombudsman and say they didn’t respond. That counts, on its own.
What to do today: find the date you complained and work out when their time runs out. If it already has, skip to the escalation steps below.
How long do you have to wait?
- A payment complaint — a scam, a wrong transfer
Banks and payment firms15 business days - Phone, broadband and TV
Complaints raised on or after 8 April 20266 weeks - Almost everything else, including banks and insurers
Financial Ombudsman and most schemes8 weeks - Energy
Or sooner, with a deadlock letter8 weeks
The clock runs from when they received the complaint — not from when they acknowledged it, and not from your chase.
One more thing the rules require: if a financial firm reaches week eight without answering, even its “we need more time” letter must explain why, say when it expects to answer — and tell you that you can now go to the ombudsman anyway. More time is theirs to ask for, not yours to grant.
Chase once, properly
One written chase, around the four-week mark, does two jobs: sometimes it shakes a reply loose, and either way it puts the delay on the record the ombudsman will eventually read.
“It is four weeks since my complaint of [date] and I have had no response. Please confirm you received it, give me your reference, and tell me when I will have your final response.”Once is enough. Repeated phone calls burn your afternoons and leave no trace; a second identical email adds nothing the first didn’t. Chase, diarise the deadline, and get on with your life until it arrives.
The day the clock runs out
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Gather two documents
Your original complaint and your chase — with dates. That’s the whole case file for a silence referral.
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Fill in the ombudsman’s form and say they didn’t respond
The form asks whether you’ve had a final response. The answer is no, and that their time has passed.
“I complained on [date]. More than [eight weeks / the required period] have passed and the firm has not sent a final response. I am referring the complaint on that basis.” -
Let them wake up if they want to
Firms often produce a sudden final response once the ombudsman writes to them. Fine — you can settle directly at any point, and nothing about referring stops them paying you.
Does silence hurt your case?
No — if anything the asymmetry runs your way. You arrive with a dated complaint, a dated chase, and a dated nothing. They arrive having ignored a customer for two months and now owing the ombudsman an explanation. You lose nothing by escalating on silence, and waiting longer earns you nothing at all.
Don’t restart the clock by accident
Re-sending the complaint “fresh”. If you think it got lost and send it again as new, you’ve handed them a new day one. Always anchor to the original: “to confirm my complaint of [date]” keeps the first clock running.
Treating a late reply as a reset. If they surface at week nine with questions, answer if you like — but their late engagement doesn’t pause your right to refer, and the eight weeks don’t start again. You can talk to them and the ombudsman in parallel.
What if you’re not sure it ever arrived?
Check what you have: a sent email is proof in itself; a web form is only proof if you screenshotted it or got a reference. If you genuinely can’t show it arrived, send it again today with the confirming line above. If you can prove the original, the original date stands; if you can’t, today becomes day one — annoying, but better discovered now than at the ombudsman.
And plainly: complaints made only by phone or social media are the ones that vanish. If that’s what happened, put it in writing today and reference the call — “to confirm my complaint made by phone on [date]”. There’s a full template in how to write a complaint letter.
The one thing silence never does
It never starts your six-month escalation window — that clock only runs from a final response, and no letter means no clock. So there’s no six-month panic here.
But don’t read that as permission to sit on it for a year. The outer limits — six years from the event, three from when you realised — keep ticking regardless, and evidence goes stale. Silence opens a door; it doesn’t hold it open forever.
We’ll watch your dates
Enter the dates from your own complaint and we’ll email you ahead of each deadline on this page — a week before the company’s time is up, and again a month and a week before your window to escalate closes. Nothing else is ever sent.
We store the dates and your address, nothing else. We delete both once the dates have passed, and every email has a one-click removal link.
Common questions
They finally replied at week nine asking for more information. Do I have to answer before escalating?
No. Answer if it might resolve things, but your right to refer crystallised at week eight and their questions don’t suspend it. Doing both at once is allowed and often fastest.
Do I need proof they received my complaint?
Your sent email is the proof. For post, it’s the free proof of postage from the counter. For web forms with no reference and no screenshot, assume you can’t prove it and send the confirming email today.
What happens if they respond after I’ve gone to the ombudsman?
Nothing bad. Read it, and if the offer puts things right you can accept and tell the ombudsman it’s resolved. A referral is a route, not a trap.
Sources: FCA Handbook DISP 1.6 (the eight-week rule and what a week-eight letter must contain, including notice of your referral right; 15 business days for payment complaints); FCA Handbook DISP (the ombudsman can consider a complaint once eight weeks have elapsed); Ofcom’s approved ADR schemes and the Energy Ombudsman process, as linked from how complaining works.
Did a firm ignore you until the ombudsman knocked?