Each week, the Guardian An­gel col­umn high­lights com­plaints sent in by you, the con­sumer, and pro­vides so­lu­tions or di­rects you to the ap­pro­pri­ate re­source.

Prob­lem: Joy Robin­son from Ari­ma said she called WASA's help line to re­port a leak on Co­corite Road, op­po­site Rod­ney's Su­per­mar­ket, on March 6 and April 1.She said, "About two weeks af­ter the first call, a red ar­row (long fad­ed) was drawn near the hole. Since then, no one has shown up and the hole is get­ting big­ger."

So­lu­tion: Ms Robin­son's com­plaint was for­ward­ed to WASA for ac­tion on April 9 and the leak was re­paired the next day.

Prob­lem: Lopinot res­i­dent Michaele Ali said, "My hus­band died af­ter a long bat­tle with Alzheimer's on Oc­to­ber 29, 2013. De­spite fi­nan­cial hard­ships dur­ing my hus­band's long ill­ness, I had kept in place a small in­sur­ance pol­i­cy with Mega In­sur­ance to in­sure that I would be able to cov­er his fu­ner­al costs."Ms Ali said she sub­mit­ted all the in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed by the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny and in a let­ter to her, the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny stat­ed that it was not await­ing fur­ther doc­u­ments.

She said, "By the end of De­cem­ber, the claims de­part­ment was telling me that they would call when the check was ready but that it may be next year be­cause of hol­i­days and oth­er peo­ple in­volved in the re­view."How­ev­er, when I called in Feb­ru­ary, they said they had mailed me a let­ter ask­ing for more in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing med­ical treat­ment be­fore his di­ag­no­sis."Ms Ali said since mail is un­pre­dictable in Sur­rey Vil­lage, she went to their Port-of-Spain of­fices with the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion with­out re­ceiv­ing the let­ter.

"Con­sid­er­ing that I paid these pre­mi­ums on time faith­ful­ly for over ten years and that their con­tract states that if I had not sub­mit­ted all the doc­u­men­ta­tion with­in 90 days the pol­i­cy would lapse, I feel that their in­abil­i­ty to pay on time is im­moral and pos­si­bly crim­i­nal."

So­lu­tion: When Mega In­sur­ance was con­tact­ed by the Guardian An­gel, the claims de­part­ment said while they were aware of Ms Ali's claim they were un­able to an­swer any ques­tions over the phone.Ms Ali was re­ferred to the Of­fice of the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Om­buds­man (OF­SO) for fur­ther ac­tion. Al­though the OF­SO was first es­tab­lished to in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints from in­di­vid­u­als and small busi­ness­es, in 2005, its man­date was ex­pand­ed to in­clude in­sur­ance com­pa­nies.

The main ob­jec­tive of the OF­SO is to pro­vide fair, sound as­sis­tance to cus­tomers who are not sat­is­fied with their fi­nan­cial ser­vices provider and to me­di­ate on be­half of those who have a com­plaint with their in­sti­tu­tion.

The Of­fice of the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Om­buds­man (OF­SO) is an Agency cre­at­ed un­der the aus­pices of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The om­buds­man re­ports di­rect­ly to the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Jwala Ram­bar­ran.

The cur­rent fi­nan­cial ser­vices om­buds­man is Suzanne Roach. The om­buds­man's of­fice, lo­cat­ed on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, can be con­tact­ed at 625-4835; 5028, ex­ten­sions 2650/2657/2681/2685 or in­fo@of­so.org.tt.