Email/phone agreement by a Hypnotherapist

paddyrg

As you have discovered, there are some very f'd up people working in "alternative therapies". You are vulnerable (or you wouldn't have gone to her in the first place), so she sees you as an easy mark. £500/hr is just unreasonable for a few weekend courses to be a hypnotherapist, a skilled surgeon with 7 yrs study, 10 yrs specialism and 10 years at the top of their field will not get £500/hr, so for a layperson it is just greed.

Write back, registered mail, something along the polite version of "I have given you £200 which is more than reasonable for what I have received. You have no legal basis to charge me for time you spend bullying me, I'm not giving you any more money, f' off, see you in court" puts the onus back on her. She either takes you through small claims where you will tell the court what you told us, and they judge what is appropriate (not based on her fantasy figures), or she doesn't, and goes away. Anything in between, ignore entirely.

Ps - do not be afraid of talk of court at all - small claims court is cheap and the worst possible case scenario is still better than paying a self-important fantasist bully anything she demands. And count this as a lucky escape - think how long she would keep fleecing you if she *did* get a chance to get into your head.

Whittleme

halibut2209 wrote: »

Let me try something.

If I told you that you had to pay me £10 everytime I replied to your posts, would you pay? Of course you wouldn't, but that's exactly what she's trying to do.

Yes you are right again.

As for posting what she has said to me I would love to but knowing my luck I'll get done for slander!

hcb42

she is outrageous, completely ignore her, eventually she will go away.

Whittleme

paddyrg wrote: »

Write back, registered mail, something along the polite version of "I have given you £200 which is more than reasonable for what I have received. You have no legal basis to charge me for time you spend bullying me, I'm not giving you any more money, f' off, see you in court" puts the onus back on her. She either takes you through small claims where you will tell the court what you told us, and they judge what is appropriate (not based on her fantasy figures), or she doesn't, and goes away. Anything in between, ignore entirely.

Thank you paddyrg!

I am happy to go to court and explain what has happened, hopefully they will see it from my point of view, which is she hasn't actually started to help me yet and I have told her to stop and keep the money I have already paid. £200 for yes bullying me, because that is all she has done.

My fear is her contacting bailiffs by selling the debt on, that does happen doesn't it or have I got very paranoid suddenly??

halibut2209

No, don't even reply to her. All that will do is show her that you are taking her seriously.

This is very similar to the private parking racket. Speak legal gobbeldygook and you frighten people into giving you money.

Do NOT contact her

Do NOT give her any more money

Do NOT think you have entered any kind of "contract" purely because you've already given some money. You HAVE NOT

This is nothing more than one of those infamous Nigerian 419 scams where they promise you rewards, but you have to keep giving them money.

You are really fretting over nothing. You cannot commit slander by pasting what someone has written. You seem to be a vulnerable person and have low self-esteem. This is your chance to take control. This is your chance to say "I'm not going to take this crap. Stop taking the pi55 out of me."

This woman represents all you see as bad in both the world and in yourself. Seize the opportunity. Don't let it consume you. Ignore it and move on with your life.

paddyrg

She might *try* to sell the debt to a debt collector (not the same thing as a bailiff) - they have no legal basis though (I could be a debt collector tomorrow, they have no right to your stuff whatsoever), but likely they will not buy the contract, it is far too weak and they will easily see there is little chance of getting their cash back. Even if she did, just say the debt is disputed, they will refer it back to her and not get involved.

Bailiffs can ONLY come if the court sends them, if you default on a payment plan that they approve and the creditor get s a county court judgement against you. It ain't happening. She is relying on scaring you and bullying you. A simple 'see you in court' letter calls her bluff. And if she keeps harassing you after you tell her you'll see her in court, she is just feeding your case and waiting for your harassment/restraining order against her!

Nothing will come of this, she is either smart enough to realise you aren't going to roll over, and count herself lucky to have got £200 off you, or stupid enough to destroy her own already weak case if she carries on harassing you for a fantasy debt. The VERY WORST CASE would be defending yourself in court, and the court awarding some small, realistic costs, which would still be severely under what she is trying to claim. The worst case scenario, that is. Frankly, she may be smart enough to realise she hasn't got a leg to stand on.

halibut2209

As regards to bailiffs, that will not happen. The ONLY way that could happen is if the following occurs

1) She takes you to court (won't happen)
2) You lose (won't happen even if 1) happens which it won't)
3) You refuse to pay

If she is theatening bailiffs, then she really is full of excrement. She has NO power to do that at all.

I'm getting mad just thinking about this.

Whittleme

hcb42 wrote: »

she is outrageous, completely ignore her, eventually she will go away.

Thank you.

I hope so. But I know there would be people on her side too saying that I was stupid to agree to something and then try and get out of it because circumstances have changed.

paddyrg

Whittleme wrote: »

Thank you.

I hope so. But I know there would be people on her side too saying that I was stupid to agree to something and then try and get out of it because circumstances have changed.

That may well be, although those people would probably *in this case* be wrong if taken to court. Yes, you did agree something, although you have not received it, just a load of 'charges' for trying to get you to book appointments. It is not up to you to worry about what her cronies think is justifiable based on their inflated self-worth, all that counts is what a judge will say. This is an entirely civil matter (unless she harasses you, in which case you may wish to involve the police), so the very worst that can happen is you get to defend yourself in court (and by submitting written evidence first - so make a note of dates/times/print emails etc now whilst still fresh). There will be no bailiffs, no police cars outside, etc. Seriously, "F off, sue me, see you in court" sums it up for me.

BTW - as hypnotherapists and most alternative therapies are learnt over a course of weekend workshops, with incredibly low bars to entry (no applicant screening) and significant fees charged for *non-medical* (by definition) treatments of spurious efficacy, the field does attract more than its share of fruitcakes. Now, I actually believe hypnotherapy is probably one of the more useful of the bunch, but £500/hr is laughable. Remember, this is not a medical professional, which means they are only very loosely (at best, if at all) self-regulated, and have no medical training despite the fancy made-up initials after their names. I could direct you to a weekend workshop where you will walk away a stage hypnotist - effectively all the same skills, but for fun and effect as opposed to candles and whale music. That would be a couple of hundred notes to learn more or less the entire suite of skills this woman is valuing higher than a movie director, brain surgeon, prime minister, hooker, or paramedic. Because of the huge markups and low skills barrier, it attracts crooks and lazy wastrels who want to make money in a pseudomedicinal manner but don't want to do the work involved in real medical training. Or the self-deluded, and frankly slightly odd people who can't relate to the real world the rest of us function in.

Whittleme

paddyrg wrote: »

Nothing will come of this, she is either smart enough to realise you aren't going to roll over, and count herself lucky to have got £200 off you, or stupid enough to destroy her own already weak case if she carries on harassing you for a fantasy debt. The VERY WORST CASE would be defending yourself in court, and the court awarding some small, realistic costs, which would still be severely under what she is trying to claim. The worst case scenario, that is. Frankly, she may be smart enough to realise she hasn't got a leg to stand on.

I did not know all that you have mentioned paddyrg, thank you.

I have always tried to make sure I do everything according to the law... probably because I am a chicken sh*t about anything to do with the law. Also my Dad always told me never to do anything which means you are forever looking over your shoulder... some kind of proverb I think!

It fills me with dread that someone can try and make me out to be a villian when all I did was be stupid and fall for her 'kind' words to begin with... how she changed. I had left her a message on her voicemail after my husband told me the bad news about the redundancies. Her reply was a text saying sorry to hear that but you owe me my hourly rate now of £500 per hour if you can't keep up with the £200 a month payments.... nice woman!