First Holiday Finance Limited · DRN-6264048

The complaint Mr O’s complaint is, in essence, that First Holiday Finance Limited (the ‘Lender’) acted unfairly and unreasonably by (1) being party to an unfair credit relationship with him under Section 140A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (as amended) (the ‘CCA’) and (2) deciding against paying claims under Section 75 of the CCA. What happened Mr O, and another party, purchased membership of a timeshare (the ‘Fractional Club’) from a timeshare provider (the ‘Supplier’) on 30 December 2011 (the ‘Time of Sale’). They entered into an agreement with the Supplier to buy 747 fractional points at a cost of £12,144. However, after trading in their existing trial membership towards the cost of this purchase, the membership cost £8,149 (the ‘Purchase Agreement’). After paying a £500 deposit, Mr O paid for their Fractional Club membership by taking finance of £7,649 from the Lender in his sole name (the ‘Credit Agreement’). Whilst the Purchase Agreement was in joint names, Mr O is the only eligible claimant (and complainant) under the Credit Agreement. For that reason, I shall refer to Mr O only throughout this decision. Fractional Club membership was asset backed – which meant it gave Mr O more than just holiday rights. It also included a share in the net sale proceeds of a property named on his Purchase Agreement (the ‘Allocated Property’) after his membership term ends. Mr O – using a professional representative (the ‘PR’) – wrote to the Lender on 12 September 2018 (the ‘Letter of Complaint’) to raise a number of different concerns. As those concerns haven’t changed since they were first raised, and as both sides are familiar with them, it isn’t necessary to repeat them in detail here beyond the summary above. The Lender dealt with Mr O’s concerns as a complaint and issued a response to it on 27 December 2018, rejecting it on every ground. Mr O then referred the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The Lender disagreed with our jurisdiction on this matter, so another Ombudsman issued a decision confirming our Service could consider the merits of Mr O’s complaint. After this point, Mr O’s complaint was assessed by an Investigator who, having considered the information on file, rejected the complaint on its merits. Mr O disagreed with the Investigator’s assessment and asked for an Ombudsman’s decision – which is why it was passed to me. Having considered everything that had been submitted, I thought this complaint ought to be upheld. As I had reached a different outcome to that of our Investigator, I issued a provisional decision (the ‘PD’) and invited all parties to respond with any new evidence or arguments that they wished me to consider before I made my final decision. I’ve reproduced my PD below, which forms part of this final decision:

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“The legal and regulatory context In considering what is fair and reasonable in all the circumstances of the complaint, I am required under DISP 3.6.4R to take into account: relevant (i) law and regulations; (ii) regulators’ rules, guidance and standards; and (iii) codes of practice; and (where appropriate), what I consider to have been good industry practice at the relevant time. The legal and regulatory context that I think is relevant to this complaint is no different to that shared in several hundred ombudsman decisions on very similar complaints. And with that being the case, it is not necessary to set it out here. But if either side would like me to confirm what I think that context is, they can let me know in response to this provisional decision. My provisional findings I have considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what is fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. And having done that, I currently think that this complaint should be upheld because the Supplier breached Regulation 14(3) of the Timeshare Regulations by marketing and/or selling Fractional Club membership to Mr O as an investment, which, in the circumstances of this complaint, rendered the credit relationship between him and the Lender unfair to him for the purposes of Section 140A of the CCA. However, before I explain why, I want to make it clear that my role as an Ombudsman is not to address every single point that has been made to date. Instead, it is to decide what is fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. So, while I recognise that there are a number of aspects to this complaint, it is not necessary to make formal findings on all of them because, even if one or more of those aspects ought to succeed, the redress I am currently proposing puts Mr O in the same or a better position than he would otherwise be in. Section 140A of the CCA: did the Lender participate in an unfair credit relationship? Having considered the entirety of the credit relationship between Mr O and the Lender along with all of the circumstances of the complaint, I think the credit relationship between them was likely to have been rendered unfair for the purposes of Section 140A. When coming to that conclusion, and in carrying out my analysis, I have looked at: 1. The Supplier’s sales and marketing practices at the Time of Sale – which includes training material that I think is likely to be relevant to the sale; 2. The provision of information by the Supplier at the Time of Sale, including the contractual documentation and disclaimers made by the Supplier; 3. Evidence provided by both parties on what was likely to have been said and/or done at the Time of Sale; and 4. The inherent probabilities of the sale given its circumstances. I have then considered the impact of these on the fairness of the credit relationship between Mr O and the Lender. The Supplier’s alleged breach of Regulation 14(3) of the Timeshare Regulations

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The Lender does not dispute, and I am satisfied, that Mr O’s Fractional Club membership met the definition of a “timeshare contract” and was a “regulated contract” for the purposes of the Timeshare Regulations. Regulation 14(3) of the Timeshare Regulations prohibited the Supplier from marketing or selling Fractional Club membership as an investment. This is what the provision said at the Time of Sale: “A trader must not market or sell a proposed timeshare contract or long-term holiday product contract as an investment if the proposed contract would be a regulated contract.” But Mr O says that the Supplier did exactly that at the Time of Sale – saying, in summary, that he was told by the Supplier that Fractional Club membership was the type of investment that would only increase in value. The term “investment” is not defined in the Timeshare Regulations. But for the purposes of this provisional decision, and by reference to the decided authorities, an investment is a transaction in which money or other property is laid out in the expectation or hope of financial gain or profit. Mr O’s share in the Allocated Property clearly constituted an investment as it offered him the prospect of a financial return – whether or not, like all investments, that was more than what he first put into it. But it is important to note at this stage that the fact that Fractional Club membership included an investment element did not, itself, transgress the prohibition in Regulation 14(3). That provision prohibits the marketing and selling of a timeshare contract as an investment. It doesn’t prohibit the mere existence of an investment element in a timeshare contract or prohibit the marketing and selling of such a timeshare contract per se. In other words, the Timeshare Regulations did not ban products such as the Fractional Club. They just regulated how such products were marketed and sold. To conclude, therefore, that Fractional Club membership was marketed or sold to Mr O as an investment in breach of Regulation 14(3), I have to be persuaded that it was more likely than not that the Supplier marketed and/or sold membership to him as an investment, i.e. told him or led him to believe that Fractional Club membership offered him the prospect of a financial gain (i.e., a profit) given the facts and circumstances of this complaint. There is evidence in this complaint that the Supplier made efforts to avoid specifically describing membership of the Fractional Club as an ‘investment’ or quantifying to prospective purchasers, such as Mr O, the financial value of his share in the net sales proceeds of the Allocated Property along with the investment considerations, risks and rewards attached to them. There were, for instance, disclaimers in the contemporaneous paperwork that state that Fractional Club membership was not sold to Mr O as an investment. However, weighing up what happened in practice is, in my view, rarely as simple as looking at the contemporaneous paperwork. And for reasons I’ll now come on to, given the facts and circumstances of this complaint, I think the Supplier is likely to have breached Regulation 14(3) of the Timeshare Regulations. How the Supplier marketed and sold the Fractional Club membership

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During the course of the Financial Ombudsman Service’s work on complaints about the sale of timeshares, the Supplier has provided training material used to prepare its sales representatives – including a document called “2011 Spain PTM FPOC 1 Practice Slides Manual” (the ‘2011 Fractional Training Manual’). As I understand it, the 2011 Fractional Training Manual was used throughout the sale of the Supplier’s first version of a product called the Fractional Property Owners Club – which I’ve referred to and will continue to refer to as the Fractional Club. It isn’t entirely clear whether Mr O would have been shown the slides included in the Manual. But it seems to me to be reasonably indicative of: (1) the training the Supplier’s sales representatives would have got before selling Mr O Fractional Club membership; and (2) how the sales representatives would have framed the sale of Fractional Club membership to Mr O. Having looked through the manual, my attention is drawn to page 6 (of 41) – which includes the following slide on it: This slide titled “Why Fractional?” indicates that sales representatives would have taken Mr O through three holidaying options along with their positives and negatives: (1) “Rent Your Holidays” (2) “Buy a Holiday Home” (3) The “Best of Both Worlds” It was the first slide in the 2011 Fractional Training Manual to set out any information about Fractional Club membership and I think it suggests that sales representatives were likely to have made the point to Mr O that membership combined the best of (1) and (2) – which included choice, flexibility, convenience and, significantly, an investment they could use, enjoy and sell before getting money back. The manual then moved on to two slides (on pages 7 and 8) concerned with how Fractional Club membership worked:

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I’m aware that the Supplier says that 90-95% of its time during its sales presentations was focused on holidays rather than the sale of an allocated property. Having looked through the 2011 Fractional Training Manual, it seems to me that there were 10 slides on how Fractional Club membership worked before the slides moved onto to sections titled “Peace of Mind”, “Resort Management” and “Which Fractional”. And as 5 of the 10 slides look like they focused on holidays, there seems to me to have been a fairly even split during the Supplier’s sales presentations between marketing membership of the Fractional Club as a way of buying an interest in property and as a way of taking holidays. However, even if more time was spent on marketing membership of Fractional Club membership as a way of taking holidays rather than buying an interest in property, as the slides above suggest, in my view, that the Supplier’s sales representatives would have probably led prospective members to believe that a share in an allocated property was an investment (after all, that’s what the slide titled “Why Fractional” expressly described it as) , I can’t see why the Supplier wouldn’t have been in breach of Regulation 14(3) in those circumstances. I acknowledge that there may not have been a comparison between the expected level of financial return and the purchase price of Fractional Club membership. However, if I were to only concern myself with express efforts to quantify to Mr O the financial value of the proprietary interest he was offered, I think that would involve taking too narrow a view of the prohibition against marketing and selling timeshares as an investment in Regulation 14(3).

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When the Government consulted on the implementation of the Timeshare Regulations, it discussed what marketing or selling a timeshare as an investment might look like – saying that ‘[a] trader must not market or sell a timeshare or [long-term] holiday product as an investment. For example, there should not be any inference that the cost of the contract would be recoupable at a profit in the future (see regulation 14(3)).”1 And in my view that must have been correct because it would defeat the consumer-protection purpose of Regulation 14(3) if the concepts of marketing and selling a timeshare as an investment were interpreted too restrictively. So, if a supplier implied to consumers that future financial returns (in the sense of possible profits) from a timeshare were a good reason to purchase it, I think its conduct was likely to have fallen foul of the prohibition against marketing or selling the product as an investment. Mr O says, in his own words, that the Supplier positioned membership of the Fractional Club as an investment to him. And as I’ve said before, the slides I’ve referred to above seem to me to reflect the training the Supplier’s sales representatives would have got before selling Fractional Club membership and, in turn, how they would have probably framed the sale of the Fractional Club to prospective members – including Mr O. And as the slides clearly indicate that the Supplier’s sales representative was likely to have led him to believe that membership of the Fractional Club was an investment that may lead to a financial gain (i.e., a profit) in the future, I don’t find him either implausible or hard to believe when he says he was told: “The representatives introduced us to the Fractional Owners Property Club and advised that this was an investment in property that we could sell in the future. When sold they told us that we would make a profit from the investment and have an exit from our contract. […] Believing we were investing in a property that would offer us a profit at the time of sale, we purchased 747 fractional points for the cost of £8,149.” After sharing a copy of Mr O’s statement with the Lender, it has questioned when the statement was taken. The Lender has questioned why there was no mention of a ‘profit from the investment’ when it referred the complaint to our service. At the point of referral, the PR shared a copy of the Letter of Complaint and within this, it says: “Your broekrs [sic] representative advised our clients that the property would increase in value, that the property would be sold and that our clients would not only receive return of the cost of the product but would also make a profit. They advise they were guaranteed that they would at least double their money.” So, Mr O did claim that his membership was marketed and/or sold as an investment for a financial gain from the outset. Indeed, the Letter of Complaint is generally consistent with the contents of the statement, which leads me to think that the statement was used to inform the Letter of Complaint in 2018. Although, I accept the statement was provided to us much later than taken, I have seen evidence, in the form of a screenshot, that the statement was taken on 10 April 2018. So, on balance, I think the statement was written on the date recorded on the statement. 1 The Department for Business Innovation & Skills “Consultation on Implementation of EU Directive 2008/122/EC on Timeshare, Long-Term Holiday Products, Resale and Exchange Contracts (July 2010)”. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a78d54ded915d0422065b2a/10-500-consultation-directive-timeshare- holiday.pdf

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So, I’m satisfied this was an honest account of Mr O’s recollections of how the Fractional Club membership was sold to him by the Supplier. From my understanding of how the Supplier sold this particular version of the Fractional Club, the slides I have referred to are a good indication of how the sales representatives would have framed the sale of Fractional Club membership to Mr O. And as I’ve said, the training included that they should expressly describe the Fractional Club membership as an investment. So, Mr O’s recollections, set out in his own words, seem to reflect that their membership was sold to him as an investment. And for that reason, I think the Supplier breached Regulation 14(3) of the Timeshare Regulations. Was the credit relationship between the Lender and the Consumer rendered unfair? Having found that the Supplier breached Regulation 14(3) of the Timeshare Regulations at the Time of Sale, I now need to consider what impact that breach had on the fairness of the credit relationship between Mr O and the Lender under the Credit Agreement and related Purchase Agreement as the case law on Section 140A makes it clear that regulatory breaches do not automatically create unfairness for the purposes of that provision. Such breaches and their consequences (if there are any) must be considered in the round, rather than in a narrow or technical way. Indeed, it seems to that, if I am to conclude that a breach of Regulation 14(3) led to a credit relationship between Mr O and the Lender that was unfair to him and warranted relief as a result, whether the Supplier’s breach of Regulation 14(3) led him to enter into the Purchase Agreement and the Credit Agreement is an important consideration. On my reading of Mr O’s testimony, the prospect of a financial gain from Fractional Club membership was an important and motivating factor when he decided to go ahead with his purchase. That doesn’t mean he was not interested in holidays. His own testimony demonstrates that he quite clearly was. And that is not surprising given the nature of the product at the centre of this complaint. But as Mr O says (plausibly in my view) that Fractional Club membership was marketed and sold to him at the Time of Sale as something that offered them more than just holiday rights, on the balance of probabilities, I think his purchase was motivated by his share in the Allocated Property and the possibility of a profit as that share was one of the defining features of membership that marked it apart from the more ‘standard’ type of timeshare available to them. And with that being the case, I think the Supplier’s breach of Regulation 14(3) was material to the decision he ultimately made. Mr O has not said or suggested, for example, that he would have pressed ahead with the purchase in question had the Supplier not led him to believe that Fractional Club membership was an appealing investment opportunity. And as he faced the prospect of borrowing and repaying a substantial sum of money while subjecting himself to long-term financial commitments, had he not been encouraged by the prospect of a financial gain from membership of the Fractional Club, I’m not persuaded that he would have pressed ahead with his purchase regardless. Conclusion Given the facts and circumstances of this complaint, I think the Lender participated in and perpetuated an unfair credit relationship with Mr O under the Credit Agreement and related Purchase Agreement for the purposes of Section 140A. And with that being the case, taking everything into account, I think it is fair and reasonable that I uphold this complaint. Fair Compensation

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Having found that Mr O would not have agreed to purchase Fractional Club membership at the Time of Sale were it not for the breach of Regulation 14(3) of the Timeshare Regulations by the Supplier (as deemed agent for the Lender), and the impact of that breach meaning that, in my view, the relationship between the Lender and the Consumer was unfair under Section 140A of the CCA, I think it would be fair and reasonable to put him back in the position he would have been in had he not purchased the Fractional Club membership (i.e., not entered into the Purchase Agreement), and therefore not entered into the Credit Agreement, provided Mr O agrees to assign to the Lender his Fractional Points or hold them on trust for the Lender if that can be achieved. Mr O was a trial member before purchasing Fractional Club membership. As I understand it, trial membership involved the purchase of a fixed number of week-long holidays that could be taken with the Supplier over a set period in return for a fixed price. The purpose of trial membership was to give prospective members of the Supplier’s longer-term products a short-term experience of what it would be like to be a member of, for example, the Fractional Club. According to an extract from the Supplier’s business plan, roughly half of trial members went on to become timeshare members. If, after purchasing a trial membership, a consumer went on to purchase membership of one of the Supplier’s longer-term products, their trial membership was usually cancelled and traded in against the purchase price of their timeshare – which was what happened at the Time of Sale. Mr O’s trial membership was, therefore, a precursor to their Fractional Club membership. With that being the case, the trade-in value acted, in essence, as a deposit on this occasion and I think this ought to be reflected in my redress when remedying the unfairness I have found. So, given all of the above, here’s what I think needs to be done to compensate Mr O – whether or not a court would award such compensation: (1) The Lender should refund Mr O’s repayments to it under the Credit Agreement, including any sums paid to settle the debt, and cancel any outstanding balance if there is one. (2) In addition to (1), the Lender should also refund: i. The annual management charges Mr O paid as a result of Fractional Club membership. ii. The trade-in value given to Mr O’s trial membership. (3) The Lender can deduct: i. The value of any promotional giveaways that Mr O used or took advantage of; and ii. The market value of the holidays* Mr O took using his Fractional Points. (I’ll refer to the output of steps 1 to 3 as the ‘Net Repayments’ hereafter) (4) Simple interest** at 8% per annum should be added to each of the Net Repayments from the date each one was made until the date the Lender settles this complaint. (5) The Lender should remove any adverse information recorded on Mr O’s credit file in connection with the Credit Agreement reported within six years of this decision.

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(6) If Mr O’s Fractional Club membership is still in place at the time of this decision, as long as he agrees to hold the benefit of his interest in the Allocated Property for the Lender (or assign it to the Lender if that can be achieved), the Lender must indemnify him against all ongoing liabilities as a result of his Fractional Club membership. *I recognise that it can be difficult to reasonably and reliably determine the market value of holidays when they were taken a long time ago and might not have been available on the open market. So, if it isn’t practical or possible to determine the market value of the holidays Mr O took using his Fractional Points, deducting the relevant annual management charges (that correspond to the year(s) in which one or more holidays were taken) payable under the Purchase Agreement seems to me to be a practical and proportionate alternative in order to reasonably reflect his usage. **HM Revenue & Customs may require the Lender to take off tax from this interest. If that’s the case, the Lender must give the consumer a certificate showing how much tax it’s taken off if they ask for one.” Responses to my PD The PR on behalf of Mr O responded to say they accepted my findings. The Lender also responded, but set out why it disagreed with my PD and that the complaint ought to be rejected. As both sides have now responded, the complaint has come back to me for further consideration. The Lender mainly has concerns over the timing of the testimony by Mr O, questioning why it had not been shared had it been taken in 2018 so it believes the testimony in its current form was not the one produced by Mr O in 2018. It also highlighted the discrepancy of 18 words in the word count which they say adds up to the claims of investment and profit within Mr O’s statement. The Lender has also provided some sales notes which they say suggest Mr O purchased his membership for holidays. It also said Mr O’s statement says very little about what happened on the day of the presentation with no mention that he even watched a presentation. Lastly, it added should my outcome not change, it didn’t believe Mr O’s trial membership should form part of my redress as we’ve previously considered a complaint about it which we did not uphold. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. And having done so, and having considered everything that the Lender has said in response to my PD, I am satisfied that this complaint ought to be upheld, for the same reasons as set out in the PD. I will, however, address the points the Lender made in response, whilst bearing in mind my role as an Ombudsman isn’t to address every single point which has been made to date, but to decide what is fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. So if I haven’t commented on, or referred to, something that either party has said, this doesn’t mean I

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haven’t considered it. Rather, I’ve focused here on addressing what I consider to be the key issues in deciding this complaint and explaining the reasons for reaching my final decision. I will firstly address the Lender’s concerns over the timing of the statement. As I’ve mentioned in my PD, I don’t dispute that the statement was provided to us much later than taken but the PR has provided evidence, in the form of a screenshot to show Mr O’s statement was taken on 10 April 2018. So I’m satisfied the statement was written on the date recorded on the statement. And the Lender seems to accept that a conversation took place then but believes the statement was amended later as shown by the metadata due to the modified date showing as 18 September 2025. The PR initially referred a complaint to our Service in relation to Mr O’s trial membership. This was set up as a separate complaint and within this case file, they submitted Mr O’s witness statement on 15 November 2023 which covered his recollections for both the trial and Fractional Club membership. The PR then shared a copy of the same statement under this case reference number on 18 September 2025. And when saving this as a PDF, this alters the metadata and this appears to be the reason why both the created and modified date is showing as 18 September 2025. I can’t agree that this evidences the statement being altered based on the circumstances of this complaint. The Lender has also said Mr O’s statement says very little about what happened on the day of the presentation with no mention that he even watched a presentation. From my understanding of how the Supplier sold this particular version of the Fractional Club, the slides I have referred to are a good indication of how the sales representatives would have framed the sale of Fractional Club membership to Mr O. And as I’ve said, the training included that they should expressly describe the Fractional Club membership as an investment. So, his recollections, set out in his own words, seem to reflect that his membership was sold to them as an investment. The Lender believes the sales notes suggest Mr O purchased his membership for the holiday benefits it provided. As mentioned in my PD, I maintain my position that Mr O was interested in the holidays options the Supplier had to offer, given his initial purchase of a trial membership. But his interest in the holiday benefits is not surprising considering the nature of the product in question. I also wouldn’t expect the sales notes to record that Mr O purchased his membership due to the investment feature as the sales representative would likely have been aware that they should not market and/or sell the membership as an investment, so I am not at all surprised there’s no reference to this within the note the sales representative left. So, the lack of reference within the note, does not mean it wasn’t sold or bought for that reason. So, I am satisfied, as I set out in the PD, that Mr O was motivated to make his Fractional Club purchase because of the associated share in the Allocated Property and the possibility of a profit. And because of that, the breach of Regulation 14(3) by the Supplier was material to the purchasing decision he ultimately made. As my outcome remains the same as my PD, the Lender doesn’t believe Mr O’s trial membership should form part of my redress but I disagree. I would first like to add that we didn’t consider the way in which Mr O’s trial membership was sold, we thought his claim was likely to have been too late under the Limitation Act 1980. Mr O’s trial membership cost £3,995 and was paid for by Mr O. I understand this allowed him to take five weeks of accommodation from the Supplier’s portfolio of resorts over the following three years. Looking at Mr O’s pricing sheet for his purchase, I can see the purchase price of Mr O’s fractional points was set by the Supplier as £12,144. But Mr O

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traded in their unused trial membership and ended up paying £8,149 for membership of the Fractional Club. So, the trial membership acted as a deposit against their purchase, and they would likely have had to pay the full purchase price of £12,144 had they not had the trial membership to trade in. In other words, the trial membership worked exactly as designed and fulfilled its purpose. So, it is right that everything they paid, both as a deposit and the remaining balance is refunded as set out in the PD. Conclusion Given the facts and circumstances of this complaint, I think the Lender participated in and perpetuated an unfair credit relationship with Mr O under the Credit Agreement and related Purchase Agreement for the purposes of Section 140A. And with that being the case, taking everything into account, I still think it is fair and reasonable that I uphold this complaint. Putting things right Taking into account all of the above, I’m satisfied that the redress I proposed in my provisional decision represents a fair and reasonable way for First Holiday Finance Limited to resolve the complaint. For the avoidance of any doubt, I’ll reiterate here the steps I require it to take: (1) The Lender should refund Mr O’s repayments to it under the Credit Agreement, including any sums paid to settle the debt, and cancel any outstanding balance if there is one. (2) In addition to (1), the Lender should also refund: i. The annual management charges Mr O paid as a result of Fractional Club membership. ii. The trade-in value given to Mr O’s trial membership. (3) The Lender can deduct: iii. The value of any promotional giveaways that Mr O used or took advantage of; and iv. The market value of the holidays* Mr O took using his Fractional Points. (I’ll refer to the output of steps 1 to 3 as the ‘Net Repayments’ hereafter) (4) Simple interest** at 8% per annum should be added to each of the Net Repayments from the date each one was made until the date the Lender settles this complaint. (5) The Lender should remove any adverse information recorded on Mr O’s credit file in connection with the Credit Agreement reported within six years of this decision. (6) If Mr O’s Fractional Club membership is still in place at the time of this decision, as long as he agrees to hold the benefit of his interest in the Allocated Property for the Lender (or assign it to the Lender if that can be achieved), the Lender must indemnify him against all ongoing liabilities as a result of his Fractional Club membership. *I recognise that it can be difficult to reasonably and reliably determine the market value of holidays when they were taken a long time ago and might not have been available on the open market. So, if it isn’t practical or possible to determine the market value of the holidays Mr O took using his Fractional Points, deducting the

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relevant annual management charges (that correspond to the year(s) in which one or more holidays were taken) payable under the Purchase Agreement seems to me to be a practical and proportionate alternative in order to reasonably reflect his usage. **HM Revenue & Customs may require the Lender to take off tax from this interest. If that’s the case, the Lender must give the consumer a certificate showing how much tax it’s taken off if they ask for one.” My final decision My final decision is that I uphold Mr O’s complaint. To settle it, I require First Holiday Finance Limited to take the steps I’ve set out at points 1-6 under the heading ‘Putting Things Right’ above. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr O to accept or reject my decision before 28 April 2026. Sameena Ali Ombudsman

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