That's their own fault for not reading the wording properly IMHO.
Who in all honesty, who does read it and can honestly say they fully understand the ins and outs?
Much of it is mumbo jumbo and unless you have a legal background you will be none the wiser quite often. In my line of work, interpreting the small print can be a minefield, often needing Counsel opinion and even then they are certainly known not to commit themselves and conclude it will be down to the Court's interpretation
My sister is a Law student who has studied this relating to contract law, and according to her most of the justification for a mis-selling case comes from the fact that the banks were selling a product that was not fit for purpose. It was claimed to be insurance to cover you in the case of inability to cover your payments, but in reality there would be almost no circumstance in which the policy would pay out. It'd be like someone selling a car as a functioning car and then adding in small print that engine and wheels were not included.
Another issue is that in many cases the small print itself is totally meaningless when read as a legal document and basically gives the banks far too much wiggle-room to get out of almost anything by not including any binding agreements whatsoever.
It seems that most PPI sold by banks themselves (most PPI sold by specialist insurers is actually worth something) was devised as a method for generating extra revenue, the purpose always being to create a useless and expensive product to flog. That is wrong and I think in those cases that refunds are justified.
DB
This is what I meant Anyone taking the time to read the Ts&Cs of most of the PPI policies could see that they were so ambiguous and open ended that there would always be a 'get out'. Infact in most cases unless you could be sure to prove you were in permanent contracted employment for the last five years they were worthless
IMO most folks taking any form of PPI needed their heads checking in the first place. Problem is many folks simply are not that aware of the implications and are overly trusting that a financial product will do 'what it says on the tin'