Dear Reader,

I phoned Barclays to ask what on earth it thought it was playing at forcing an elderly victim of crime to play stick or twist with his life savings. I said your father needed confirmation that if his ombudsman case went to a final decision and he didn’t win, Barclays wouldn’t withdraw the £439,000 offer.

I’m so glad you wrote to me as it would have been a travesty had your father taken the money. Following my intervention, Barclays circumvented the ombudsman’s usual procedure and agreed in writing to lock in the £439,000 offer while your father proceeded to a final decision. This gave him the confidence to move forward.

In another victory, the ombudsman then changed its mind about treating the 10-part fraud as one large case. It decided to split it into 10 smaller cases after all. This meant if it decided again to award your father £885,000, Barclays would be legally obliged to cough up in full. Then, lo and behold, it made a final decision. Some four years after the crime, it upheld your father’s complaint and he was finally awarded £885,000. It took so long to come that you feared your father might die in the meantime. But he is very much alive and overjoyed to have his money back.

A Barclays spokesman said: “We want every single one of our customers to have a brilliant experience when they bank with us, and we acknowledge that did not happen on this occasion. We take all of this feedback very seriously and use it to help us review our processes and service so that we continue to improve.”

Your father’s is one of the biggest customer payouts by a bank in recent years but, without your dogged persistence, financial know-how and canny thinking to involve me at the critical stage, it might never have materialised.

This case has left me deeply concerned at the ombudsman’s impotence to force firms to make payouts above its limit of £150,000 (now £355,000 for new complaints). I know from my mailbag that financial firms ignoring the ombudsman are a wider problem.

Another reader who felt failed by the ombudsman waited a shocking four years for it to decide he should be paid £523,879 by wealth firm Lycetts after he received bad pension advice.

It was a final decision, meaning Lycetts was legally bound to pay £150,000, but the remaining £373,879 payment was optional. If Lycetts decided not to pay, the man would have to take the firm to court. But since six years – which is the limit on legal action – had passed since the duff advice was given, Lycetts could reject his case for being too old.

The man wrote to Lycetts and it offered no reassurance. It said it was consulting its lawyers. As the weeks passed, he felt snookered. But following my involvement, two days before the deadline set by the ombudsman to accept its decision, Lycetts agreed to pay the full £523,879. It tried to get the man to sign a confidentiality agreement, which was, of course, useless as I already had all the details.

Meanwhile, another Telegraph reader who lost £279,000 to a scam was left hanging after taking his complaint to the ombudsman. It recommended compensation of £179,000 and gave the man’s bank, NatWest, a deadline. Weeks passed and there was no response from NatWest, let alone a payout. Eventually, following my involvement, NatWest agreed to pay the man £149,000, which he accepted as he felt too stressed to fight on.

These cases expose the ombudsman for being a poodle when it needs to be a rottweiler. The Financial Conduct Authority must grant the ombudsman the teeth it needs to enforce fairness over the biggest payouts. I will be on its case until something changes.