Possibly taking Budget to court.

Win2Kuser

Hi,
I used to be with Budget for my car insurance. When I changed my car, I was 'fined' £20 for not returning a form I was never sent. They had previously told me they would take the money, but after several firm costly phone calls, they said they wouldn't take it, sent me the correct form which I returned, but then they unlawfully took the money anyway!

I recently sent them a letter stating that I wanted £20 plus the cost of calls to them for their mistake. The total was £25.37. I was phoned by someone in their complaints department who promised me the money within a few days. 2 months on, I'm still waiting.

I want to send them one more letter before I take this to the small claims court.

My question is, can I ask for other things to be added on such as my time and the cost of the letters, or the electricity I have used for computer time etc?

The last letter I sent them cost me £1.55, so if I send another one, that would be a total of £3.10 that their actions have cost me (in addition to costly phone calls) in order to get my money back. Can I add this to the total to be paid back, and possibly interest?

I basically want to send them one last warning letter that if I don't receive my money back plus other costs accrued so far, I will be taking legal action.

Thanks in advance

InsideInsurance

You may want to consider going via the FOS first given there is no risk involved with them where as with court you'd have to pay the fees up front and hope to win the case to recover them from the insurer.

Unfortunately both courts and the FOS are both painfully slow and the 2 months its taken to date will seem like a breeze in comparison.

You would be able to claim for things like postage or phone calls as long as you can substantiate it (ie have receipts/ bills)

Your computer is going to be something like 2p per hour for its electricity and starting to claim these things (a) looks stupid and (b) looking petty wont ever win you any friends.

It is potentially easier to ask for a global "inconvenience" figure.

Of cause there is always a consideration that you are looking to recover £20 and there has to be an element of reasonableness in the whole matter and claiming £500 inconvenience in trying to recover £20 loss is never going to look reasonable.

Win2Kuser

Thanks InsideInsurance

Yeah, computer time is being petty. I guess 'real' costs such as recorded postage for the letters and the premium rate phone calls is claimable. With interest being as low as it is, interest added to £20 over 9 months as going to be pretty much nothing, so no point claiming that.

When they originally took the money without my knowledge, it caused a card payment to be rejected which caused me considerable embarrassment as it was in front of a queue of people - that kind of thing is hard to put a value on.

This has been going on since January 2012, so another x number of months is not going to hurt, it's the principle behind it. They were fast enough to charge me £20 as an admin cost because I failed to return a signed credit agreement which I never received. They could at least have the decency to refund MY money when I ask for it back. To be honest, it's not like I'm missing the money, and I don't care if it takes another 9 months, they are not getting away with it.

What would be a sensible global 'inconvenience' figure? The same amount they charged me?

Thanks again :thumb:

InsideInsurance

Embarrassment has little to no financial value and payments get blocked for all sorts of reasons - (1) my payment to my natwest credit card gets blocked every single month by Barclays and (2) my Amex payment in a shop the other day was blocked, according to Amex they never received the request

Via the FOS then circa £50 is the normal kind of figure from my (limited) experience for general inconvenience without being able to prove anything out of the ordinary.

SueMaggie

This page from the FOS website may be of help.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/distress-and-inconvenience.htm#10

Apart from refunding your £20 you're likely to be looking at no more than £100 (see the section Scale Of Payments).

Win2Kuser

Brilliant, thanks Inside Insurance and SueMaggie :T

I'll bang another letter in to them then asking for £20 for being a PITA, and the £20 they owe me, plus the telephone calls and letters.

Would it be worth threatening them to either pay in 14 days or risk legal action, or just risk say further action including either the FOS or Small Claims Court?

I've kind of got some idea of how the letter will be, just not sure on the etiquette of threats lol

Many thanks

somalt

Personally, I would stick with the "how disappointed you are by their failure to do what they promised" angle more than anything else. It might be worth saying you are looking for an inconvenience/compensation payment in line the the FOS guidelines as that clues them in you are aware of them without being antagonistic.

They should automatically give you FOS rights in their final response letter, assuming that they don't resolve it with in 2 days of receipt and I suspect with Budget that is unlikely to happen.

If they don't agree to increase the amount agreed then you could sent them a letter before action.

Win2Kuser

Thanks Somalt

It's getting a bit late now, but I'll draft up a letter tomorrow and see how it sounds.

Thanks

olly300

Win2KUser you can take your case to the FOS right now you don't need to contact Budget again to get a deadlock letter. Just include your last complaint letter to Budget and the recorded delivery slip.

The reason you can do this is that you have evidence that you sent your letter to Budget over 8 weeks ago and they have declined to deal with it.

Even though you haven't asked for the correct amount of compensation you will probably get it when it goes to the adjudicator.

In my case when I complained about CIS mis-selling insurance to me I didn't ask for compensation I asked for my premium back. However the company who deals with CIS's payments sent me £25 for admin costs as compensation, and the underwriter, Aviva, actually paid the premium back.

Just make sure on your FOS form you put your daytime contact phone number, even if it's a mobile, and an email address.

Once you submit your complaint:
1. You will get an acknowledgement in about 2 weeks,
2. Then in 3 months you will get another letter checking you still want to go ahead with your complaint - you need to ring them up if you don't.
3. Then about 3 months after that you will get another letter checking you still have a complaint and informing you your case has been allocated an adjudicator.

The adjudicator will phone you up up to 6 weeks later, get you to explain the complaint, ask you what you want and then contact the company you complained about to get their side of the story plus any records.

Once the adjudicator gets the details from the other side if they comply or works out how they can sort it out, s/he will contact you to tell you what happens next and how long it will take.

In my case the other side, CIS, declined to give the adjudicator full details of the issue and any records. Which I'm not surprised about as they lied to me continually when I tried to sort the issue out directly with them by trying to pretend I hadn't sent or told them full information. Unfortunately for them I had sent them a letter querying something else with the information in it again.

If you start court proceedings with Budget they will pay the £20 plus £25 compensation to avoid going to court, but your court fees will be higher than that. This they won't pay up as they don't have to until you have a hearing.

Quentin

olly300 wrote: »

.........If you start court proceedings with Budget they will pay the £20 plus £25 compensation to avoid going to court, but your court fees will be higher than that. This they won't pay up as they don't have to until you have a hearing.

No.

If you start court proceedings then you include your court fees in your claim.

If the defendant does not want to defend the claim, then they have to pay the full amount of the claim (which includes the court fees).