Advice regarding: Tekram Goldberg Ltd (Serps)

lawbar

Hi, I wonder if anyone can give me some advice, on who to get in touch with regarding this
company. Some time ago I paid £500 to (Tekram Goldberg Ltd) to look at my Serps and see if I was entitled to any back. But have not herd anything, I've phoned several times, no one returned my call and I cant get through now. Only I'm disabled and had to take early retirement due to ill health and could do with my fee back which they promised, (less admin fees). I've been in touch with the Ombudsman who advised to get in touch with Trading Standards. I phoned them several weeks ago and have not herd anything back. Only this type of thing tends to upset me, having to keep phoning people. Thank you for any advice.

Regards Mr L Bartram

dunstonh

Oh dear - One of our favourite dodgy claims companies. There is a fair bit of past posting on this and a couple of other claims companies you may wish to search on.

To give you some background, contracting out of SERPs was reviewed by the FSA and found not to have been widespread mis-sold. The FSA found it had a failure rate of 1.5% of all applications. So, that means 98.5% of complaints would be rejected. The simple criteria is that if you were aged under 45 at the time of contracting out (40 for women) and were earning over approx £10k a year then contracting out is not bad advice. The FSA issued a guide to consumers that had this flow chart in it to help you see if you had been mis-sold or not.

Statistically, you have a 1.5% chance of an upheld complaint on that basis. This is why they want up front money from you. There is little chance of success. The people that do the phoning ring hundreds of people a week. They tell you all sorts of lies about being mis-sold. The most common one is that if you are contracted out then you were mis-sold and there is money waiting for you to be claimed. They make no reference to the FSA review. If this this person phoning gets 10 people a week to agree to pay the money then they make £5000 a week. The earnings for them are not in the 1.5% that are upheld but in the £500 fee.

You should take your complaint to http://www.claimsregulation.gov.uk/consumers.aspx

Look further down that page for complaint handling and it tells you what TG should have done regarding your complaint. If they have not followed that complaints process then you should complain to the Ministry of justice. If you think you were also misled into paying this £500 then you should tell the MoJ as well. You are not the only one to be conned by these cowboys and the MoJ need to know.

lawbar

Thank you for the quick reply (dunstonh). "(If you think you were also misled into paying this £500 then you should tell the MoJ as well)".

I feel I was total misled, and was being phoned 3 times a week for several months before I gave in. I was totally taken in, I feel a fool for falling for the con!