As Birmingham is our home, we have paid tribute to the city by naming some of our meeting rooms after its famous landmarks. One of them is named after Spaghetti Junction, a Medusa’s head of highways. It can take you where you need to go, but it is a long and confusing journey, and there is a fair chance you will get lost on the way.

In short, not a bad metaphor for the roadmap we have sketched out with other ombudsman schemes about how best to manage the implications of alternative business structures (ABSs).

It has been hard, grinding work, but very necessary. In principle, the ABS initiative promises much for the consumer: more competition; lower prices; greater accessibility to legal services; and innovative legal models. But there are also dangers. If the market moves more quickly than the regulatory and redress structures which are meant to shape and shadow it, we risk confusion. With new and established brands entering the market, offering bundled products and spanning regulatory environments, some consumers will face the frustration of being passed from pillar to post to have their complaint investigated by an impartial body. And as legal ­services are offered by providers with increasingly diverse backgrounds, through subcontracting and multi-­disciplinary arrangements, it will be much harder to work out who is at fault for any service failure and who has the power to order redress.

Such is the tortuous and grinding nature of our work.

Nevertheless, after much deliberation, cogitation and digestion of legislation, ombudsman schemes, processes and values, we now have the beginnings of a plan about how we should respond and are currently translating it into a format to communicate with the rest of the world. Until the detail is fully worked through, however, it will remain far from clear as to whether a case should be dealt with by us, the Financial Ombudsman or the Housing Ombudsman and so on.

But we already have cases where somehow or other, because of the varying natures of our regulatory framework, none of us can say for ­certain that it falls within our jurisdiction. More often than not, we can work something out. Take the following examples.

Not a seat in the house

Mr B and Ms C had been together for four years before they found themselves in a financial position to buy a property together. After trawling through papers and property websites, they finally found the right property for them. As they had lived in fully ­furnished rented property before, and with a tight budget, they were relieved to find that all furniture was included in the sale.

The complainants made an offer and were delighted to have it accepted. They then set about the business of engaging a solicitor to help them buy the property.

As the sale proceeded, their solicitor and the estate agent both confirmed to the couple that the furniture was included in the sale. But, after contracts had been exchanged, the solicitor wrote to the seller, without the couple’s consent, requesting that the house was cleared of furniture. The solicitor then told the couple that ­furniture was not included because the property had been repossessed.

The couple complained to the solicitor and asked to be compensated to the value of the furniture. The solicitor said the estate agent had wrongly informed him that the sale would include furniture. He accepted that he was, in part, responsible for the misinformation given to the couple, but insisted that the estate agent was also to blame and refused to meet the couple’s demand. The complainants came to us. We agreed that the solicitor was not wholly to blame, but there was fault. The complaint was settled informally as the solicitor agreed to pay half the value of the furniture. We then spoke to the Property Ombudsman and were able to signpost the couple to it so they could pursue the estate agent for the other half of the claim.

Where there’s a will

Not wanting to feel as though she would leave family and friends to worry about dealing with an estate without any indication of her wishes, Ms H looked to the internet to find a cost-effective way to make her will. She found a will-writing company that seemed to offer fair fixed-price systems for different service packages and she decided to engage it. But, when she had been through its service and had received her will, she felt the price she paid was excessive for the quality of service and final product she received.

She came to us to see if we could look at her complaint, but an investigator looked into the case and found that it was outside our jurisdiction. The reason for this was, while the will was produced by a solicitor at the firm, the complaint actually concerned a salesperson and someone in its billing team, neither of whom were regulated legal professionals, meaning the complaint did not directly relate to any service provided by the regulated solicitor. We could not deal with the case, but we were able to help Ms H by finding someone who could. We contacted Consumer Direct, a government-funded consumer advice service and, with its information, we were able to effectively signpost Ms H to the Office of Fair Trading.

Money for nothing

Mrs G was in need of a divorce lawyer. She had no experience of divorce and, with money being tight, she went onto the internet to do some research and shop around.

She found an online divorce service provider, firm Y, which offered a range of packages within an affordable price range, and got in touch with it. She spoke to a representative to discuss different options. By the end of the call she decided on a service towards the higher end of its range at £400, which offered more in terms of advice and management for her peace of mind. She was told that she would need to make a full payment in advance of the service and was asked for her credit card details. She was also told by the representative that the firm would send her an email with login details and terms and conditions. She would need to accept these and send them back before it would take payment.

Mrs G made the payment but ­immediately started to have second thoughts and decided to look for another provider. As she did not use her login details or accept the terms and conditions she did not think she needed to let the company know.

Mrs G continued to shop around, found another provider and engaged it to carry out her divorce proceedings. But at the end of the month, she received her bank statement and found that firm Y had deducted £400 from her account. The money had been taken on the day she called it and before it had sent her the email with terms and conditions.

She contacted the firm and asked for a refund but it refused. Mrs G then called us and, after an investigation, we agreed with the complainant that the money should not have been taken from her account. Firm Y agreed to pay back the money in full.