Express Solicitors @ExpressSols- Breach of Contract, court summons *** Claim Dismissed - with costs!!!***

[London1971]

Actually, also send them an SAR on Monday.

That will give you visibility into exactly what these ‘costs’ are made up of.

 

Once an SAR is sent by you it becomes a legal obligation for them to provide you with every piece of information they have on you within 40 days. This includes fees, emails, screenshots, phone conversations .

 

Companies tend to snap to it when this is requested , if an SAR is not fulfilled correctly, it’s very easy for you to to report them to the ICO. The fines for them not complying are bankruptcy level.

 

Im going to bet that you will be the first person to send an SAR to them and they will poo themselves, and either not comply or send an incomplete reply. That’s perfect because you can use it as a stick to beat them with to get them to drop the claim.

 

If they do comply the information will help you put together a defence. It will be interesting for a judge to see if these probably hyper inflated fees are fair.

[London1971]

Good, they had better have a data controller, and if that data controller doesn’t care about GDPR he / she should be fired. My European marketing director was fired over a GDPR issue. The fines are terrifying and are a massive stick.

 

Either way it’s necessary for the OP to know exactly what these fees are made up of.

 

£3.5 k is a lot of billable hours for a quality solicitor even. It would be interesting to see how many hours they put in to this. Probs no more than a couple of hours work. 3k is ridiculous.

 

 

 

 

[London1971]

@BankFodder .Very good point you make. Perhaps the OP only needs to ring the solicitors, apologise, and give them all the information they need from his wife, then Bob's your uncle, they win and you receive a payout. Everyone is happy.

 

Judging by their Google Reviews they are pretty good at winning cases.

[London1971]

SAR should produce all phone conversations. If they don't, report to ICO.

 

Medical conditions ? Note from a GP? Explaining Medications Side effects etc. Esp if Meds have depression or anxiety side effects, another stick to beat 'em with.

[London1971]

Were you on the A depressants while they were calling you?

[London1971]

Ok, don't worry, SAR produces all phone calls

 

https://www.expresssolicitors.co.uk/page-people/james-maxey#:~:text=James Maxey founded Express Solicitors,over more than a decade.

 

1. get a note from your GP on Monday explaining that you have been on AD's, for what reason and the consequences of being pressured and how bad stress is for your situation.

 

Enclose letter to this guy (see link) with a covering letter along the lines of. Send it with signed for delivery, do not email him!

 

Dear xxx

 

Please see GP note enclosed

 

Your agents were constantly pressuring me over the phone while I was at work, at home, and in the car during this period.  The very fact that I am on AD's should point to the fact that it is wholly inappropriate for you to send me a massive court claim form for £xxx, totally out of the blue. This has been and is continuing to be very detrimental to my condition, and I   expect the Court claim to be fully withdrawn and no more money owed,

 

I appreciate your rapid response 

 

Kind Regards

[London1971]

Nope just send it to the Managing Partner for now,

 

Good chance of a result without going anywhere near a court with the GP letter. Not 100%, but pretty good.

[London1971]

Yup, of course send acknowledgement to defend,

 

Perhaps this is something that should have been sent a long time ago, before any mention of a court claim. Unfortunately I've had to have this fight before on many occasions  (my wife was sick) and it's always worked but never got to the stage of a court claim.

[London1971]

Yes, in great health now.

 

But there are processes and procedures with Claim forms so I'll chime back in at some point  and let the others take it from here.

[London1971]

5 hours ago, Stormy1976 said:

Hi @BankFodder

 

Thank you, I intend to defend the case and go through all the steps, this will be my summer time project.

I will be acknowledging the court paper today, - it's really unfortunate that my work is so demanding and I have been on 4 meetings so far.

 

Reg settlement without prejudice - no I won't accept that and if we come to this point I will ask for advice.

 

I will review the updated account and I have called my GP too for the letter.

 

Do I still send that letter please?

Also just logging SAR on line today.

 

Many thanks

 

 

I'm going to defer on the mechanics of a defence to others,

 

But one of the most sensitive subjects that any organisation, be it private or public is around depression and vulnerable people. You only have to Google 'debt collection suicides' and it's easy to see that it's toxic for them to pursue you any further. Especially for the sake of a few measly thousand.

 

You are on a strong antidepressant, my wife is on these, they are not a joke. Anybody running a law firm should know they are not a joke. In fact Tax Credits backed down over our £12,000 over payment because of this.

 

The person with the best understanding and most to lose here is the Managing Partner, hence why you send the letter to him, who has the power to stop this in it's tracks, as opposed to some poorly trained junior solicitor just out of uni.

 

You also have absolutely zero to lose!

 

 

 

 

[London1971]

Tis a bit weird , did you get to the stage where you had sent them certified ID already.

I thought that was standard practice when dealing with any solicitor.

Eg a copy of your passport and a utility bill?

The data protection department should be completely independent of any issue you have with the company, 

[London1971]

@BankFodder is this something that can be used in @Stormy1976 defence? 
 

No ID given? I’ve never dealt with any solicitor who hasn’t asked for this before opening any case.

 

What exactly did you send them? I guess they sent you a contract and you signed and sent it back to them!

[London1971]

This will hopefully become clear when you receive the SAR, if they fully comply. A copy of anything signed by you would have to be produced.

 

If there is no signed agreement! And no Proof of identity, surely they are on shaky ground?

 

Are they just speculatively throwing out claim forms, to anybody who didn’t complete the process. Knowing that they will win by default on many of them?

[London1971]

I was very surprised about how good their Google reviews are. It’s difficult and extremely counter productive to try and cheat those.

 

The fact that they answer every single review is very rare and shows that they care about their image, and that they also have an understanding of how Google see’s their company.
 

Nearly 3k Twitter followers, and a pretty active feed, no complaints .

 

 

[London1971]

This is not necessarily kosher under GDPR rules, see link and highlights below. Unless of course this chap, your solicitor is the DPO. If the company does not have one appointed they are in breach of GDPR.  Scary conflict of interest if it's your solicitor dealing with the SAR. I'd ring anonymously to reception and ask who their Data Protection Officer is.

 

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/accountability-and-governance/data-protection-officers/#:~:text=The GDPR introduces a duty,certain types of processing activities.&text=The DPO must be independent,to the highest management level.

[London1971]

1 hour ago, BankFodder said:

I would just like to dampen down the enthusiasm of be here.

I have a sense that people are starting to feel a bit gung ho about this.

I'd like to make it clear that the chances of succeeding on this are only just 50-50

I’d be gung ho if it was 10%. You don’t become a successful ambulance chasing ‘law’ firm without being ruthless. 50% sounds pretty good to me.

 

However, I will go out in a limb and guess that 99% don’t bother to defend and get issued with a default judgement.

[London1971]

Quite potentially they have broken GDPR already. The whole point of the regulation is that somebody totally independent to anyone on the case deals with the necessary information. The fee earning solicitor working on her ‘case’ does not meet those criteria.

 

Why on earth is their data controller not dealing with it? Why on earth has the data controller handed it on to someone where there might be a conflict of interest?

 

I think the OP should get on the phone to the ICO and ask some advice on this, it seems very suspicious. From express’s point of view they could be risking a bankruptcy level fine.

 

 

 

[London1971]

Some para legal, half qualified reject from a proper law firm working for a bunch of NHS draining ambulance chasers, does not a GDPR expert make.

 

Check everything!

[London1971]

They have a lovely active social

media feed too. Twitter , all about how they love to donate to charities and stuff. 

[London1971]

Not saying it is money with menaces, just learnt that if you want to get a result, you can say what you want on social media.  Sometime's it's the only way to make a company care because it's their image on the lline

 

Nasty aggressive sales people, she's pretty much on class A meds for depression, you do not get put on that stuff for no reason.  This ties into the SAR, dime to a dollar she doesn't receive any phone call recordings.  So many openings to trey and stop this.  Or of course she could always just go ahead with the claim, or defend., or whatever.

[London1971]

Yup, they need to know about her meds, they trump everything. Just Google 'Debt Collection suicides' to see how toxic this issue is. 

[London1971]

Have to agree to disagree on that,

 

The world is full of people who dismiss it like it's nothing, all the time. At that treatment level it really isn't nothing. It's nothing to do with mental capacity at all, anyway. It's the way they are pressuring and threatening her now, that is the issue.

 

Which is why I think that she needs to let them know right now (with medical proof), as I suggested earlier. Therefore the judge will have sympathy, if they keep going with that knowledge. Picking on a clearly ill person won't get any sympathy, if the judge is remotely human.

[London1971]

 

 

I think the OP feels bullied, heck i'd feel bullied if I had a firm of bloodsuckers threatening me with court.

 

 

[London1971]

Yup, I'm sure their contract is water tight, that shouldn't even be in question, but it's not everything.

 

If I was the OP, I'd send a nice letter as before to the Managing Partner, explaining my circumstances, with my GP / Consultant note. Asking politely to drop the matter. If it got ignored I'd be hitting them in the social media.  Highly effective, in their circumstances down to their excellent marketing department, working hard to give them a very clean image.  This shows in their expert knowledge of SEO, and their clever use of Google reviews.

 

Of course you might be right, but this is all worth a try IMO

 

 

[London1971]

Could be @Manxman in exile but stranger things have happened.

 

For the price of a postage stamp

and an envelope, it’s worth a try.