Wasting the time of consumers is a method seemingly being employed in the litigation process, by which time the consumer with the claim runs out of energy and capital. Had a claim for an event against a utility company, a specialist charity informed me that I had one of the best cases they had seen. Hired a lawyer, spent a large amount of time writing the claim and making sure the facts were correct, it was sent to them via the correct legal channels. Then the corporate passed it to a loss adjusters who 'sat' on it for 95% of the time they were allowed, sending back a response which made absolutely no sense. Simply, they lied about maintenance that the utility company performed along with some other very strange facts. Decided that you cannot fight stupidity so put the case on hold. Then, many months later, a family member contacted the loss adjusters mentioning myself, even though they were told directly not to, and the response was something truly unimaginable. You could not make it up, then I started to piece together how the legal system works. As a consumer, most will need to go through the process of a lawyer to write the claim and send it via the correct process, however the corporate can hire a representative that has no legal training and is not part of any professional institute. It means that you have to spend both time and money 'training' their representative to 'see sense', with them adding more irregularities that you need to unravel each time. Simply, the corporate can hire a company with the intelligence of an amoeba following an approach of incremental double-binds, and there is very little you can do to unwind it. I went to both country lawyers and the best London lawyers -not one- noticed that the loss adjusters were -not- legal representatives. They did however, without fail, always ask for a retainer. This begs the question, is it part of the legal system that the consumer pays for trying to coerce sense out of other parties representatives. It is a very successful tactic if you are trying to make the claim ‘go away’. The only solution which seems to neutralise this problem is to fight fire with fire, which would explain why the simpler 'no win no fee' lawyers appear to have a higher success rate. Any settlement would be much lower, however when taken in the overall context of fighting ‘folly’ is that the least worst!

I have read previous posts extensively and really learned a lot so far. I think our situation is slightly different to some. We had an escape of water last summer which caused extensive damage. The loss adjuster instructed their preferred building company to quote for strip-out and repairs. Our experience of this company was awful, prompting us to instruct our own surveyor. This was helpful and we were re-housed by our insurer in a nice place. The Loss Adjustor’s own surveyor has completed the schedule of works and has done a good job addressing pretty much everything we wanted. SoW has just gone out to tender. We want a local builder to do the repairs, not their preferred builders who botched things before. We have more confidence in a local builder who has personal references and a reputation to protect. Any advice on how to get our own builder? The insurance is paying large monthly rents, so presume lead-in and completion times will be large factors. We simply want a decent job done. I have read advice about lawyers and others about taking it gently and calmly. It is very difficult to judge as the next week or two now suddenly seems to be crucial. Thanks