small claim advice needed!

trixxi

Hi,
hope this is posted in the right place, here goes...
My husband and I have received a small claims summons each for work done by a garage to both of our cars.
The amount in total they are claiming is £344.10 which we do not dispute ( we had told them previously we were having difficulties and he accepted this, until now.) I contacted his solicitor as there is expenses and interest to pay over and above. The solicitor has come back with a total price of £697.10 which we can not pay.
The paper work is not all accurate and I am wondering why we have two separate charges for fees, sherriff officers delivering the forms, raising it fees and solicitors fees. The copies of invoices have both of our amounts on them, suggesting to me one account and not two individual ones. They also have our address wrong and postcode wrong, which is why we did not receive these letters recorded delivery and now we are being charged for the hand delivery. Is this fair?
I do not want this to go to court as my husband has just started a new job which involves passing credit checks, and this affecting it.
Please help.

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trixxi

Can anyone help? or is there somewhere else I should take this?

skintandscared_2

I don't have much experience but I didn't want to read and run.

Have you made any kind of instalments payment offer to the garage? If you have, is it in writing? If this did end up going to court, I think from what I've read on here that a judge is likely to be more sympathetic if you have made an offer to pay what you can afford. As regards the paperwork, I don't really understand how that all works. Have you contacted the garage to speak to them about it? It may be that if you make a sensible offer to pay in instalments they will drop the case and there won't be further charges incurred. You could point out that if it DOES go to court, it would just take longer and the judge would likely only make a ruling that you pay instalments that you can afford anyway. This way, the garage would start getting their money quicker.

How long ago was the work done? Had you made any arrangement to start paying, which you then defaulted on?

Best of luck.

fatbelly

I'm guessing from the wording that you're in Scotland.

You've recieved the summons, which I think is equivalent to the English Claim Form, so it's too late to want the court not to be involved - it already is.

You must respond to the summons within the time limit and state what you believe you owe and what instalments you can afford.

ND have a Scottish-version factsheet here. They can also give telephone advice

trixxi

Thanks FB

gave them a call as soon as I read your advice, they were really helpful, not just with this but other stuff too

Hopefully we can get back on track now!

Cheers