Early in February 2022 a reviewer called ‘Star’ left the following message on the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Trust Pilot page.

Not long after the post was removed following a complaint from PHSO.

Unexpectedly, the review was restored to the Trust Pilot site, only to be removed once again. An organisation can only ‘flag’ for one breach at a time, so clearly Trust Pilot did not consider the first flag to be justified, so PHSO tried again and as in previous (4) cases were successful in removing the review. You can see the criteria here.

Star’s review appears to be based on genuine experience, certainly it rings true to any users of PHSO. It’s not advertising or promotional – no the very opposite in fact. It doesn’t contain personal information so it must have been removed on the basis that the comments were ‘harmful’ or ‘illegal’. There was certainly an element of ‘hate speech’ as Star first attacked the ‘unhinged’ complainants and then their ‘lazy’ caseworker colleagues. Defamation was the most likely reason for the censorship.

Defamation. We can remove content that is likely to cause serious harm to someone’s reputation or serious financial loss to a business.

This ‘insider’ information was most definitely likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the Ombudsman’s Office who like to control their media image in line with that stated on their website.

We have a transparent and fair process and will let you know about each stage of our process to make sure we have a consistent, quality service. 

The process as described by ‘Star’ sounds anything but a consistent, quality service but it does gives a realistic overview to the final arbitration stage. Anyone who has managed to stay the course of the complaint system thus far is likely to come across as ‘unhinged’ as they have been ‘gaslit’ for months if not years by every person in authority they have encountered. Finally, arriving at the ‘independent’ and ‘impartial’ Ombudsman they will have a lot to report on, if they can find a real human being to converse with.

PHSO Trust Pilot Review.

The caseworkers are indeed impossible to get hold of and their managers always seem to be away just when you want to talk to them about an inaccurate report which you received last thing on a Friday afternoon. Star has a point that the caseworkers should carry the can for delays, lost evidence and endless misinterpretations of the evidence but PHSO doesn’t work like that. You can only contact someone who is of absolutely no help to you as they do not have the information on your case to answer questions.

But Star saves the best till last with their ‘astonishment’ at the average age of the caseworkers who have to weigh up the evidence for complex and life threatening cases across a range of disciplines. Without a hint of irony, Star confirms that people who have experienced such trauma need ‘real people to talk to’ but sadly PHSO fail to provide any real people or anything like a real service as confirmed by the many (97%) negative reviews on Trust Pilot. What PHSO provides are intake workers who can’t wait to shut you up and caseworkers who can’t wait to shut you down.

This post has been brought to you in the interest of transparency by PHSOtheFACTS who welcome all PHSO whistleblowers with or without their first pxxxc hair.