Using middlemen ie no win no fee companies

RavingMad

My father in law took a cold call from one of these firms and agreed to let them try and get some money back for him. He'd already claimed back a large chunk of money himself so he didn't think there was any more money to be had.

Anyway, not only did they successfully claim back £4k but they got some for my MIL, whose details they took at the same time.

It's started me thinking that I might give them a ring. I've had a couple of loans out in the past, as has my wife, but we're pretty sure we've never chosen PPI. We'll probably lose the best part of 40% but it's 60% we would never have got in the first place.

Or am I being stupid?

kerri_gt

Is there any reason you can't do a bit of work yourself and possibly get 100% back?

dunstonh

All a CMC does is send a letter to the lender you tell them about. Nothing more. Can you not do that yourself?

[Deleted User]

If you can post to this forum you can certainly write your own letter to the Bank. Why pay anything at all to a Claims Company?

RavingMad

To be honest, I thought you would just had over your name and address and they would go hunt for your money. Do they need more information than that? I honestly can't remember when/where I would have taken out my loan

meer53

If you can't remember when/where you took out loans, how would you expect perfect strangers to do that ? And if you can't remember that, how can you remember that you were missold the PPI ?

RavingMad

As I said, I don't think I have been missold any PPI; I'm too tight to pay for additional insurances etc. That's why I thought what have I got to lose?

I was thinking they would do all the legwork of checking my credit reports etc? Actually work for their commission?

dunstonh

RavingMad wrote: »

To be honest, I thought you would just had over your name and address and they would go hunt for your money. Do they need more information than that? I honestly can't remember when/where I would have taken out my loan

You need to tell them who you have borrowed money with or who has sold you PPI.
You need to give them your reasons for complaint and information to support your complaint (typically the FOS form takes care of this).

There is no pot of money. You are making an official complaint with allegations that the person that set it up mis-sold you. Your complaint is then investigated to see if the evidence supports your allegations.

There are some claims companies that put in bogus complaints with a complete list of potential reasons. Many of which will not stand up under scrutiny and could lead to rejections as you lose credibility (balance of probability decisions tend to go with the most credible side). However, some of these will succeed, not due to the content of the letter but because a reason has been identified at the bank's end.

I was thinking they would do all the legwork of checking my credit reports etc? Actually work for their commission?

The extent of the work most of them do it get you to fill out a form with information and they put it in an envelope and post it on to the bank for you.
There are some that will get you to authorise them to do a credit search and they will then put in a bogus complaint in your name to see if they get lucky. However, you are just as capable of doing that if you want.

jioates

I've heard from my other members of family that doing it yourself, although you could claim back 100% of the money you could be owed, you're more than likely going to be rejected.

If you get rejected, you should really escalate that claim and take it up to the FOS, who uphold around 70% of rejections from the banks and the fact that 90% of policies have been mis-sold, you could very possibly be owed some money.

dunstonh

I've heard from my other members of family that doing it yourself, although you could claim back 100% of the money you could be owed, you're more than likely going to be rejected.

Statistically, it is the other way around. Personalised complaints are more likely to succeed. Even the FOS say that they prefer to hear complaints in the persons own words and not a template letter (that would have been seen many times over using the exact same reasons each time). I know a couple of complaints handlers at financial firms and they say they have a number of claims companies on their blacklist in they scrutinise those complaints harder as they know they are likely to be dodgy than someone sending in a complaint directly.

If you get rejected, you should really escalate that claim and take it up to the FOS, who uphold around 70% of rejections from the banks and the fact that 90% of policies have been mis-sold, you could very possibly be owed some money.

Thats a bit simplistic but almost there. Some banks are running at 70% on FOS overturns. However, some firms are running at only 15%. Some times of PPI (such as mortgage PPI) have very low overturn rates. Loan PPI has a very high overturn rate. There are no facts that show 90% were mis-sold.

[Deleted User]

jioates wrote: »

I've heard from my other members of family that doing it yourself, although you could claim back 100% of the money you could be owed, you're more than likely going to be rejected.

This is not the case.

Claims Companies use exactly the same free of charge complaints process as someone acting alone. They then charge around a third of any redress (plus VAT) for their services.
"Members of family" who gave you this information are sadly deluded and will have wasted a lot of money if they have employed a CMC to represent them in PPI complaints.

jioates wrote: »

90% of policies have been mis-sold

Can you provide a link to anywhere this is officially recorded as fact? I can't.