Claims Companies - What they do for you

-taff

1
They do nothing you cannot do yourself.
They fill in the same form, they send it to the same place, and they will charge you upwards of 30% for the privilege.

If you are contacted by a claims company who tell you

• Your name is on a list for a refund - It's a lie - there is no list
• You are due a refund - It's a lie, no-one is due a refund
• You had a loan/CC/Mortgage that had PPI - It's a lie - they have no way of retrieving your personal financial information because it's not in the public domain
• Banks/Building Societies hid PPI in the interest payments - It's a lie - it's not possible to do this
• You can reclaim if you were bankrupt - It's a lie - the ability to complain about the sale of PPI rests with the OR. You can only complain about the sale of PPI from any credit post-bankruptcy.
• We have special powers to compel companies to give you your money back - It's a lie - they use the same free of charge complaints system that you would
• It was added without you knowing/your permission - It's a lie - you would either have signed for it or agreed to it, but you've forgotten all about it

2
Claims companies have no special powers to make a company respond, to get you any money back, to magic paperwork out of thin air. Statistically, you are less likely to be successful if you employ one.

3
If you are a tax payer, your tax comes out of any monies before you pay the claims company, then they are paid out of what's left

4
If you have had defaults/amounts written off, or are in arrears, with the company that you are complaining to, they can keep any or all of the redress, including the 8% interest towards that debt. A claims company will still want their cut even if you don't see a penny of your redress. You will end up out of pocket.

5
The company you complain to will send any redress to you personally, not the claims company, but they will also inform the claims company they've done so, so there's no getting out of paying them because they'll know about it.

6
Claims companies will take you to court if you don't pay them.

7
If you employ one, their T&Cs will most likely say that you agree they will represent you in any future complaint, so even if you forget you employed them, if you make a complaint off your own back and do not cancel your contract, they ae legally entitled to a share.

8
If you have already made a recent complaint and were unsuccessful, you cannot make the same complaint twice. If you then employ a company to make another complaint, they may charge you for the 'work' they did.

9
If you accidentally employ one before reading this, you have 14 days to cancel your contract with them - take advantage of that, there is no charge for that

10
If you do cancel your contract after they have taken your details/complained/outside of the 14 days, they are enttled to charge you a 'reasonable fee' for the 'work' they've done [according to the Ministry of Justice] so expect to pay them then too.

11
The only reason you could conceivably be forgiven for employing one is that you cannot understand english or you cannot write english and you have no friends who can either.

Follow the instructions in these guides to do it yourself, post on this forum for any answers you might need

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/ppi-loan-insurance

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/ppi-credit-card-insurance

I am sick of writing this all the time, so I thought I'd get it all down in a thread so I can just refer any future poster to this.
Please feel free to add any info I've missed.