Courier company my friend used damaged their item and refusing to payout

RFW

john01269 said:

As my friends company that he owns paid for the courier to deliver the item and it was going to be used for the company, what producers can be taken to now escalate this issue, would it have to go through a small claims court or is there anything like the financial ombudsman that can be used to try and resolve this issue as the item has been damaged by them and as mentioned if it should have not been collected in the first place due to diesel in the tank, then they should have not picked it up in the first place and told him there and then that they can't pick it up or deliver it.

Where's the tank now?

If I was your friend I'd be getting the tank back and try and get as much back from it as possible.
By all means try a claim but I can't see that being successful.

Don't bother with small claims, that will be throwing more money away. You may even find them counter suing, if the diesel they didn't know about caused any damage to other property.

Also, take the valuable lesson that you don't always go with the cheapest quote.

GDB2222

martindow said:

I am afraid I agree that there is not going to be a successful insurance claim here.  As it was worth £2000, is it possible to repair?  I can imagine that a patch could be welded on to the damaged area for a few hundred pounds, so the loss could be less than the price paid (I'm sure a welder would want it emptied and cleaned first!).  For a functional item like this the appearance of the tank is not important.

It’s a bunded tank, ie two layers with a space between. So, not straight forward to fix.

It looks pretty old, so simply moving it may have been enough to make it leak. A brand new tank costs ten times as much, so you might wonder why this one was so cheap.

 The lifting lugs look pretty flimsy. So, maybe enough to take the weight of an empty tank, but they failed because of the weight inside. 

The op may get a very large bill from the carrier for the cost of disposal of the toxic waste.