Macquarie Bank, HSBC and Bank of Queensland were among those with the highest levels of customer complaints recorded by the Financial Ombudsman Service during the 2010/11 financial year.The FOS released its annual review yesterday, reporting that it had received 30,283 disputes during the year to June - up 27 per cent from the previous year. Disputes involving credit made up almost half that number - 14,537. The other large category was insurance.Home loans, credit cards and personal loans were involved in 86 per cent of credit disputes. Financial hardship was an element in 47 per cent of disputes.Compulsory licensing and membership of an external dispute resolution scheme under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act have contributed to the increase in credit disputes. Details of a credit provider's EDR scheme must be included in default notices. For the purposes of comparison, FOS has calculated what it calls the chance of a dispute coming to FOS, which measures the number of disputes relative to the size of the financial institution's business (based on the number of active accounts).In the case of credit card issuers, the median chance of a dispute coming to FOS was 19 per cent.Debt collectors and other receivables' management companies recorded very high dispute levels. ACM Group's rating was 113 per cent, Credit Corp's was 110 per cent and Lion Finance's was 56 per cent.However, FOS pointed out that complaints about debt collectors and purchasers of debt ledgers may include complaints about the actions of the original credit provider.Among card issuers, Macquarie Bank had a rating of 48 per cent, Citibank had 41 per cent and HSBC had 42 per cent. The Big Four were close to or below the median. ANZ's score was 19 per cent, Commonwealth Bank's was 13 per cent, NAB's was 16 per cent and Westpac's was 15 per cent.Those with very low levels of complaints included BankSA, with a rating of 3.1 per cent, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank (5.8 per cent), GE Finance (9.4 per cent) and American Express (10 per cent).In the housing finance category, the median chance of a dispute coming to FOS was 48 per cent.The two institutions that stood out for having a high level of complaints were GE Personal Finance (434 per cent) and RHG Mortgage Corp (319 per cent). Both have exited the mortgage market and have been managing established loan books.Macquarie Bank had a rating of 107 per cent, HSBC's was 72 per cent, Police & Nurses Credit Society's was 110 per cent, Bank of Queensland's was 96 per cent and Bankwest's was 61 per cent.Other home lenders recorded complaint scores at or below the median.In the deposit-taking and payment category, where the median level of complaints was a low four per cent, institutions with high complaint scores included AMP Bank, Bank of Queensland, HSBC and National Australia Bank.And, in the consumer loans category, those with high complaint scores included Bank of Queensland, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, National Australia Bank and Macquarie Leasing.FOS said that some of