Wheretonow
Registered User
- Messages
- 2
Hi guys,
I would be most grateful and very interested in your thoughts/expertise/experiences on the following, especially those with a legal background!
Bit of a longer read, so thank you in advance.
Overview
Family suffered an international flight cancellation several years ago.
Heard about a company that specialises in making claims on behalf of clients by entering a contract with terms of engagement.
Signed the contract, agreed to the terms of engagement, supplied all information needed to allow the company to seek the claim on my behalf, understanding that they charge a 25% fee for a successful claim.
Issues
Having engaged with the company I was told that they had begun to work on my claim as soon as I had given authorisation.
There was an acknowledged tight turnaround due to statute of limitations on claiming for this particular flight claim, but had given more then 3 working weeks to get the claim in with the airline who I subsequently found out operate a straightforward online claims process.
Fast forward a number of weeks after the known cut off point for the claim and contacted the company for an update on the progress of my claim.
I was asked for more information, which was odd as they had all information already.
Fast forward 2 more weeks and receive a call to say claim had been rejected as outside the limits to make a claim and had only given authorisation in the last number of weeks.
Asked for email clarification on who I was talking to, when claim was made on my behalf by the company, as authorisation had been given and acknowledged almost 2 month previous to this phone call update.
Followed up then with emails to the company looking for some simple answers to queries regarding the claim process and when it was executed.
Did this numerous times and each time rejected by the management of the company who refused to acknowledge when the claim was made.
The company even presented a claims rejection letter from the airline, but removed the date and time stamp from the email.
I even made a section 4 access data protection request in the hope that this would shed light on the situation.
With this done, I had to follow up with the company who told me they had deleted all details of me and my case from their systems and that they were then cancelling the contract between us, claiming that because I had delayed supplying authorisation they were invoking their terms of engagement which states that if a client is not "prompt" supplying details they can cancel the agreement at any time.
I countered this as they state in their terms of engagement that they would only make a claim after reviewing the claim information, work to the best of their abilities on behalf of clients and if they felt there was a case only then move forward, else inform the client that they would not be taking the case.
As the company refused to confirm when they executed the claim I eventually made a data request to the airline in question and found out that the company I had entered an agreement with, had not made the claim until I had followed up with them on progress, which of course was rejected as it was executed too late.
I followed up with the company letting then know that I now knew that they had failed as per their agreement terms of engagement.
They responded and then fully acknowledged that the claim would never have succeeded and I had to take some responsibility for that.
As this service was not paid for up front, I cannot make a small claims.
Had this claim been successful by this company or if they had informed me that they would not take the claim and thus allowing me to make a claim independently, it would have been worth €1800 (3 person's on the flight, €600 per person).
I am happy to acknowledge that from my initial contact with the company a number of weeks passed as I gathered all details, checked out the company, scanned, signed and sent details to them.
However it was never said to me that this was an issue when I sent the required information and follow up information requested.
Having investigated what was involved with making a claim, the airline in question have a very simple and straight forward claim process.
And while their general turn around time is 14 days, I experienced a 24hour turn around and when I eventually found out when the company executed my claim they also had an answer within 24hours.
Where do I stand now as they clearly did not adhere to their own terms of engagement and clearly demonstrates a number of breaches of these conditions?
Thank you for reading and look forwarding to what my next possible steps could be to seek redress.
I would be most grateful and very interested in your thoughts/expertise/experiences on the following, especially those with a legal background!
Bit of a longer read, so thank you in advance.
Overview
Family suffered an international flight cancellation several years ago.
Heard about a company that specialises in making claims on behalf of clients by entering a contract with terms of engagement.
Signed the contract, agreed to the terms of engagement, supplied all information needed to allow the company to seek the claim on my behalf, understanding that they charge a 25% fee for a successful claim.
Issues
Having engaged with the company I was told that they had begun to work on my claim as soon as I had given authorisation.
There was an acknowledged tight turnaround due to statute of limitations on claiming for this particular flight claim, but had given more then 3 working weeks to get the claim in with the airline who I subsequently found out operate a straightforward online claims process.
Fast forward a number of weeks after the known cut off point for the claim and contacted the company for an update on the progress of my claim.
I was asked for more information, which was odd as they had all information already.
Fast forward 2 more weeks and receive a call to say claim had been rejected as outside the limits to make a claim and had only given authorisation in the last number of weeks.
Asked for email clarification on who I was talking to, when claim was made on my behalf by the company, as authorisation had been given and acknowledged almost 2 month previous to this phone call update.
Followed up then with emails to the company looking for some simple answers to queries regarding the claim process and when it was executed.
Did this numerous times and each time rejected by the management of the company who refused to acknowledge when the claim was made.
The company even presented a claims rejection letter from the airline, but removed the date and time stamp from the email.
I even made a section 4 access data protection request in the hope that this would shed light on the situation.
With this done, I had to follow up with the company who told me they had deleted all details of me and my case from their systems and that they were then cancelling the contract between us, claiming that because I had delayed supplying authorisation they were invoking their terms of engagement which states that if a client is not "prompt" supplying details they can cancel the agreement at any time.
I countered this as they state in their terms of engagement that they would only make a claim after reviewing the claim information, work to the best of their abilities on behalf of clients and if they felt there was a case only then move forward, else inform the client that they would not be taking the case.
As the company refused to confirm when they executed the claim I eventually made a data request to the airline in question and found out that the company I had entered an agreement with, had not made the claim until I had followed up with them on progress, which of course was rejected as it was executed too late.
I followed up with the company letting then know that I now knew that they had failed as per their agreement terms of engagement.
They responded and then fully acknowledged that the claim would never have succeeded and I had to take some responsibility for that.
As this service was not paid for up front, I cannot make a small claims.
Had this claim been successful by this company or if they had informed me that they would not take the claim and thus allowing me to make a claim independently, it would have been worth €1800 (3 person's on the flight, €600 per person).
I am happy to acknowledge that from my initial contact with the company a number of weeks passed as I gathered all details, checked out the company, scanned, signed and sent details to them.
However it was never said to me that this was an issue when I sent the required information and follow up information requested.
Having investigated what was involved with making a claim, the airline in question have a very simple and straight forward claim process.
And while their general turn around time is 14 days, I experienced a 24hour turn around and when I eventually found out when the company executed my claim they also had an answer within 24hours.
Where do I stand now as they clearly did not adhere to their own terms of engagement and clearly demonstrates a number of breaches of these conditions?
Thank you for reading and look forwarding to what my next possible steps could be to seek redress.