Sue royal mail rather than claiming compensation.

martindow

RFW said:

martindow said:

If you employ a solicitor their expenses will not be claimable as the small claims system is designed to be used without legal help being necessary.  As has been mentioned, judges take a dim view of people opening claims when you have not exhausted the complaints process. 

While I agree with much of what you have written, legal costs can always be claimed if a case is won. As far as I'm aware it's up to the judge to decide what and how much gets paid. Sensible legal fees will be rewarded.

Although it is true that you can ask for legal costs, my understanding is that they are awarded only in exceptional cases.  The norm is that you represent yourself and if you choose to get legal advice it is at your expense.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

My understanding was costs are very limited (a figure of £90 has been suggested on these forums before) to stop one party trying to claim for £500 per hour fees and bullying the other party out of the process. 

heldenbrau

mattyprice4004 said:

Paying you cost and not the sale price is fair - you can send another to the buyer at no cost to yourself then. 
If they paid out on the sale price, you'd be getting 2 'sales' rather than just your costs covered.

The process is appalling, though. I don't even bother claiming these days.

I don't agree, sometimes the item is irreplaceable, or the customer wants a refund.  Also if that was a first time customer, they are not likely to come back, so you lose potential future sales.  In this situation the item I sold would have taken 2 months to source a replacement, so I had to refund.   

heldenbrau

custardy said:

I note theres no tracking reference.
What service did you use?

I deleted it from the post, it was international tracked and signed, tracking showed that the order had not been delivered.

heldenbrau

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

Court would probably not be impressed with you not attempting to follow their claims procedure first, if it got that far.

You are correct that Royal Mail do their very best to ensure the claims process is as difficult, long winded and painful as possible to put you off claiming, it's an extremely poor practice.

For £50 I'd press on with the claim by email if possible.

The reason for wanting to go to court is because of the procedure being too long winded and from past experience they don't pay out because of the way I buy my stock.  When I buy my stock I'm sent an excel spreadsheet with the prices and then I send payment by bank transfer to China.  I have been proceeding with the same lost claim and the latest is that the excel spreadsheet is not a receipt.  Each reply takes a week or two and is contradicting to the previous one.  At first they tried to say that International tracked and signed didn't cover valuables.  I shouldn't have to go through all this trouble, they are not even refunding the postage I paid for international tracked and signed when the tracking number clearly shows it's lost.

RFW

martindow said:

RFW said:

martindow said:

If you employ a solicitor their expenses will not be claimable as the small claims system is designed to be used without legal help being necessary.  As has been mentioned, judges take a dim view of people opening claims when you have not exhausted the complaints process. 

While I agree with much of what you have written, legal costs can always be claimed if a case is won. As far as I'm aware it's up to the judge to decide what and how much gets paid. Sensible legal fees will be rewarded.

Although it is true that you can ask for legal costs, my understanding is that they are awarded only in exceptional cases.  The norm is that you represent yourself and if you choose to get legal advice it is at your expense.

There are lots of costs you can claim from travel expenses to consulting experts.

This explains it better than me, it also links to the government pages which lists all possible ways of claiming costs.

https://www.smallclaimscourtgenie.co.uk/small-claims-court-costs-contracts/

martindow

RFW said:

martindow said:

RFW said:

martindow said:

If you employ a solicitor their expenses will not be claimable as the small claims system is designed to be used without legal help being necessary.  As has been mentioned, judges take a dim view of people opening claims when you have not exhausted the complaints process. 

While I agree with much of what you have written, legal costs can always be claimed if a case is won. As far as I'm aware it's up to the judge to decide what and how much gets paid. Sensible legal fees will be rewarded.

Although it is true that you can ask for legal costs, my understanding is that they are awarded only in exceptional cases.  The norm is that you represent yourself and if you choose to get legal advice it is at your expense.

There are lots of costs you can claim from travel expenses to consulting experts.

This explains it better than me, it also links to the government pages which lists all possible ways of claiming costs.

https://www.smallclaimscourtgenie.co.uk/small-claims-court-costs-contracts/

Yes, but that article quoted makes it clear that fairly specific conditions have to be met to make it likely and it is still at the judge's discretion.  Going back to the OP, a claim where the dispute resolution has not been exhausted is not very likely to encourage the judge to order costs I would have thought.

Undervalued

RFW said:

martindow said:

RFW said:

martindow said:

If you employ a solicitor their expenses will not be claimable as the small claims system is designed to be used without legal help being necessary.  As has been mentioned, judges take a dim view of people opening claims when you have not exhausted the complaints process. 

While I agree with much of what you have written, legal costs can always be claimed if a case is won. As far as I'm aware it's up to the judge to decide what and how much gets paid. Sensible legal fees will be rewarded.

Although it is true that you can ask for legal costs, my understanding is that they are awarded only in exceptional cases.  The norm is that you represent yourself and if you choose to get legal advice it is at your expense.

There are lots of costs you can claim from travel expenses to consulting experts.

This explains it better than me, it also links to the government pages which lists all possible ways of claiming costs.

https://www.smallclaimscourtgenie.co.uk/small-claims-court-costs-contracts/

"Claim" is not the same as actually being awarded. Which in turn is not the same as actually getting the money!

Mistral001

heldenbrau said:

Today I am in the same situation that I have been in many times before:  An expensive item about £150 was sent tracked and signed to Germany.  Over a month later the customer claimed item not received and I checked the tracking, it was lost so I refunded them.  So I have filled out the claim form from royal mail and added the photos they asked for to prove the value of the goods.  This took AGES!!!!!! I had to go through all my invoices to find the value of each item in the order, I had to screenshot each invoice and highlight the items on the invoices with paint shop pro.  I thought it was still worth doing for the £53 I could get in compensation.   I had to fill it out twice because the form reset after about 5 minutes.

The package which went missing was for a single order yet it had several invoices.   Surely that is a strange way of  sending an order.   Perhaps RO think it is a bit suspicious.

RFW

Undervalued said:

"Claim" is not the same as actually being awarded. Which in turn is not the same as actually getting the money!

Totally agree on not getting the money. I was merely putting the point that judges can and will reward legal costs. There will be cases where they won't but if that was the "norm" as stated then there wouldn't be lawyers filing small claims for their clients every day.
Having gone through the process a few times on both sides I do know that judges will reward costs and legal fees. On a couple of occasions I've had judges who were so annoyed with a defendant that they would have awarded much more than I could have claimed.
Just to bring this back to the thread I think the OP shouldn't be resorting to court. I generally advise against it on here. The court process should always be a last resort, it is costly and won't always reap rewards.