"Urgent – you are owed £3350 for the PPI you took out, time is running out to claim."

So ran my latest text message this week from claims management companies. Which is interesting, as I have never had any PPI let alone paid out thousands for it.

The Financial Ombudsman Service this week reported that up to 1500 new PPI complaints are pouring in each day and it has now received more than 400,000 complaints in total. Two-thirds of cases are brought by claims management companies (CMCs), and the Building Societies' Association last month called for a clampdown on CMCs after estimating that mutuals received more than 20,000 bogus complaints from them in just six months.

Nationwide said one in three of its claims are false and 75% of these are from CMCs.

Typically, CMCs take 25% or 30% of the compensation that a customer gets for reclaiming mis-sold PPI. The typical amount reclaimed is about £2750, so the CMC can earn more than £800 per claim.

A Which? survey found 65% of us have been phoned by a CMC and 55% have received a text.

That is still drowning out the message that bank customers with a claim for genuinely mis-sold PPI can get exactly the same result themselves by using a simple template letter.

Glasgow has been identified by the ombudsman as the UK's top PPI hotspot, with the average successful claim bringing customers a £4000 refund.

Now a claims industry expert has developed a cheap smartphone app to help people make claims for mis-sold PPI without paying hefty fees to CMCs.

Julie Lee of Tyler Morgan Claims has created the DIY PPI £3.99 app for iPhone and iPad users, which walks claimants through the claims process. Tyler Morgan, based in York but with a busy Glasgow office, deals only with PPI claims relating to personal insolvencies.

Ms Lee said: "I've experienced many calls from people who have straightforward claims and don't need to use the services of a claims management company, so I thought that an app would be a great way for them to do it themselves."

She said the average Scots claim would earn a CMC over £1400 "just for filling in some forms".