Aviva Medios Healthcare - are we being treated fairly?

WindyWo

I've reached out to paulmayo and a number of others in this thread. As yet, no responses.

paulmayo

Good Morning

Sorry for the delay in replying. I would be very interested in investigating how, as a collective, we could take action against Aviva. I believe I mentioned my phone number in an earlier post but its 07774216550 so please feel free to contact me. I'm sure that with even a small number of people involved and a small investment we could finally discover what action we can take to seek recourse for the way Aviva have handled us as clients.

paulmayo

Judging by the recent posts, there appears to be 5 of us now who are still looking to take action -
Windywo
Colinmb
supersonicol
02jim
paulmayo (myself)

I have spoken already with 02jim on the phone and we are both ready to start something but agreed to wait to see if others were willing to join with us. If the others listed here are willing to call me, I'm happy to act as a central contact point initially. If any of you are concerned about your phone number being visible when calling me, dial 141 before my full number and your number will not be shown to me. You can check that this is true by looking online or contacting BT. I hope to hear from you all.

Barry_Man

Did someone call my name?

Seriously though, I have been keeping an occasional eye on this thread to see what (if anything) develops.

Firstly, some observations on what has gone before (I'm going largely from memory here as I don't intend to trawl back through the thread or anything else):

1. In spite of requesting other contributors to provide me with copies of historic documentary evidence to back up the claims, I never received anything of substance. My own historic records were patchy but some others claimed that they had such documentation, but when put on the spot they totally failed to deliver. This was both in respect of the OHRA documentation and the subsequent NU documentation. To me this all speaks volumes.

2. I've long been suspicious of some of the contributors that seem to spend an awful lot of time producing long drawn out repetitive postings that seemed to add little, if anything, to what has gone before. Many of these contributors (someone coined the phrase “industry types”) did not claim to be policy holders and I just wonder what their (vested?) interests were.

3. The FOS concluded that Aviva was entitled to make the changes (that they had made) to the policies over the years. Without any strong evidence to counter this (see 1. above), arguing against this proves difficult.

4. There now seems very little prospect of any action being taken against Aviva by the authorities unless someone can solidly prove a case against them.

Lastly, a word of caution in getting together as a group. In my mind, there really needs to be some sort of formal agreement between the parties concerned in order to ensure that not only any pooled monies are properly managed and accounted for, but also to ensure that the broader interests of the parties are represented (and not misrepresented) in a way that the parties agree.

Having said all that, life (as well as being too short to get further bogged down in this crap) has moved on as far as I'm concerned. But all the same I wish you all well in your endeavours.

Barry_Man

I'd also add the following to my post of yesterday:

A. Although one may feel that, on principle, Aviva should not be allowed to do what they have done, the courts are concerned with matters of law not of principle. It is worth bearing that in mind. I'm sure that there have been many cases that have been fought on principle and ended up costing the claimants huge sums for no real benefit.

B. A bit more on getting together as a group. If it were me I'd want to check out the bona fides of other members (especially those in lead / managing roles). I'd want to meet up and see some serious documentation (e.g. driving licence, passport, utility bills etc) and, of course, be more than willing to provide the same myself.

C. I know it probably goes without saying, don't under estimate legal costs. They can escalate very quickly (and easily) if you are not very careful. If there's only a small group, a bill of several thousands each could mount up before you've even scratched the surface.

I realise that this may all sound somewhat negative, but one should be going in to this with eyes open.

Good luck once again.

paulmayo

Thanks for your comments Barry Man. Whilst I don't agree with all of your comments, it is important, as you say, to go in with your eyes open.
Firstly I think its important to remember that, as is usual in cases like this, it only takes a few to scratch the surface and make some noise about the issues and the many other clients who either didn't know how to take action or didn't realise that they could will want to be involved. Corporations that act in this way rely on the separation of their clients and the general culture of fear of taking action that prevails through society.
Also transparency between those people involved is essential but those who have nothing to hide or fear have no reason to be afraid of that. It is important to be sensible and cautious but living in fear is debilitating and stops people taking justified action together.
When a company acts in such an unjustifiable way, it will only take enough voices to join together before the company will be forced to listen and take action either because the law will make them or their shareholders will.
Thank you for your support and kind wishes.

02Jim

I'm not sure that Barry Man is quite correct in saying the FCA concluded that Aviva were entitled to make changes. I had correspondence with the FCA but they told me that they would look at my complaint but had no obligation to reply to me, which they didn't. See post #248 after the FOS decision.

The FOS did not uphold our complaint, except Aviva's 'wording' on the previous yrs large increase in premiums, for which policy holders were offered a paltry few hundred pounds (some accepted this, but many like myself did not). The FOS case was riddled with inconsistences & they then fell back on the excuse the case was outside their remit. Frankly they didn't want to know & get involved with such a big case with Aviva. You have to read the forum from the beginning to understand the issues which are quite complicated.

It was shortly after this in April 2014 that a lot of the many initial contributors to the forum 'disappeared' & were no longer contactable. I wondered why this was & why they were even unable to 'sign off'?

Having spoken to Paul Mayo (he has my mobile no) & said much the same to him as in Barry Man's post #336 I could ask some of my barrister/solicitors friends to advise on a suitable independent firm of solicitors to look at the plausibility of taking a Group Action & what the cost for this advice might be.

Any funds anybody was prepared to donate would be lodged with these solicitors for safe keeping & if unused returned to the donors. If the advise was we would be wasting our time in continuing so be it, but maybe others have ideas for a better way forward? Thoughts please.

DonPedro

Thanks 02Jim for your recent post.As a Medios policy holder for many years I read with interest that policy holders were offered a paltry few hundreds in response to large premium increases.
Could you please tell when this was and did Aviva only make the offer to those policy holders that complained? As you may have guessed this is news to me as I never received any such offer.

02Jim

DonPedro, if you go to post #161 you will see around about the date the offer was made. You need to read through this whole forum from the beginning to see what progress was made over time. As I have said the amount offered as far as I was concerned, & many others, was not worth even bothering about compared to the hiked increases in the premiums, so I wouldn't be too concerned about it.
I guess, if you can be bothered, you have to go through the process & complain to the FOS - it's all in the forum.

paulmayo

Hi everyone

I'm happy to report another positive step forward, as I've now had a very positive conversation on the phone with Windywo, who feels as both Jum and I do, that there are various things that can be done to address the way Aviva has treated us. We have agreed to wait to see if we can also arrange direct contact with Colinmb and Supersonicol before moving forward. As things are starting to happen, if you want to be involved please contact me.
Paul