Newlyn refund question

jander

This is what I will be sending

Letter before court claim
Dear Sir or Madam,
Re: Refund of £202 for XXXXXX
Despite my repeated attempts, I have not yet received a refund of £202, which I am entitled to.

Since the refund was authorised by Tower Hamlets on the 16th of December 2014, I have been in touch with you over the telephone in 3 separate occasions. I was told that due to certain people in the department dealing with refunds being on annual leave, I should call back on January 2, 2015 where I would be given an update on the status of my refund. Despite my repeated requests for a clear explanation of your refund policy and time period I should allow, I was not given such information.

I called again on 2 January 2015 to be told that the only person able to authorise refunds was the company director, who, according to the agent I spoke with, happened to be on annual leave. I was also informed that a refund would take 6 weeks, information which is neither available on your website, nor was provided when I requested it initially.

If you do not agree to process the refund in a timely manner, please send me a detailed response saying why you don’t agree along with any supporting documentation.

To avoid taking court action, I am willing to use Alternative Dispute Resolution to resolve this problem.

If I do not receive a satisfactory response from you within 5 working days of the date of this letter, I intend to issue proceedings against you in the county court without further notice. This may increase your liability for costs.

I refer you to the Practice Direction on pre-action conduct under the Civil Procedure Rules, and in particular to paragraph 4 which sets out the sanctions the court may impose if you fail to comply with the Practice Direction.

I look forward to your acknowledgement.

BenefitMaster

No - you have to give them at least 14 calendar days to be reasonable.

The_Slithy_Tove

Don't say "in a timely manner", as it's meaningless. Be specific about the timescale you want. Don't see why 14 days shouldn't be used.

And stop phoning them. It's pointless. As soon as you put the phone down, it's like the call never happened (for them, at least).

jander

Thank you, that is a sensible approach. I've posted the letter, lets see how they react. I suspect that they do keep phone records though, which I may ask them to produce if it comes to court proceedings. Also, for the fun of it, I might just ask for the "director"'s holiday plans