Hopefully insurance will come down...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14846666

Its a joke really that these parasites have been allowed to do this at all

 

Yesterday i recieved a cold call from a car hire firm i have never heard of, asking me if my Bike incident from Feb this year had been sorted... WTF???. .... I asked where she got my number from, she replied with the name of a solicitors i have never heard of. When i said it had been sorted, i could tell she just wanted to get of the phone probably to bother someone else who had an accident7 months ago.. I did my best to keep her from that by talking for another ten minutes till she practically hung up..

 

had a minor accident back in may.reported it to insurers and despite telling them no injuries and wouldnt be claiming for any damage to bike they passed on my details to legal bods.I was getting calls two three times a day for several weeks from same person.She promised to close file everytime i bothered to answer.Then they sent out claim papers to sign even though i wasnt claiming anything.Rang them up and she claimed that she didnt know i wanted file closed.When i called her by her christian name and said she was a liar and clearly didnt know her father and the ombudsman would be hearing from me,she closed the file and hasnt rung since.gave insurers a piece of my mind as well.

 

Even though I work in personal injury I have also been getting bugged with these types of calls and text messages even though I have not had a crash.

I had a call a few weeks ago where the voice on the other end stated that my injuries could be worth a guaranteed £3750 (which appears to be the standard figure quoted)

So I asked what accident are you referring to which immidiately seemed to cause some confusion at his end.

I then said "how can you guarantee that my injuries are worth £3750 (bearing in mind that I have not had a crash or been injured) when you do not know the extent of the injuries or what the long term prognosis is, and what about special damages, you seem to make no allowance for Specials" He then went on about dealing with the claim on a no win no fee (Conditional Fee Agreement)

This seemed to cause even greater confusion and the voice started to bluster and went on about how the claim would be handled by experts.

So I then said "Why should I give you a case when I could deal with it myself?"

Again he went into bluster mode goinng on about if I know how the personal injury side of law worked, I would appreciate how difficult these claims are to deal with at a personal level.

At this point I then suggested that if he was going to continue to deal with members of the public who may have potentially serious injuries, he would do well to at least go and learn about how the sytem works, namely

Risk assessment of the case
ATE Insurance (He had no idea what this was)
Valuation according to the severity of the injuries
General damages and special damages (Apparently he had never heard of this, but is fundemental to any personal injury case)
He had no idea of statute of limitation (3 years in personal injury cases)

And a whole host of other points. His aim was to sign people up and then pass them onto a law firm they had under their wing.

And this is the whole crux of the matter.

These claims management firms have nurtured some law firms to take on their cases in return for a referral fee, which ranges from £500 - £1,000.

If the quantum (value of the case) is under £1,000 then the law firm will not be able to recover any of their costs, but they have to make at least £1,000 just to pay the referral fee, and then they have to recover their own costs.

Now bear in mind that under the new rules, if a case is valued at £10,000 or less, then it goes onto what is called the Fast track scheme and legal costs are fixed at around £1400, which mans that they have to be handled by paralegals or legal execs (non qualified) and they have to use the portal system which is supposed to keep track of these costs.

If fees exceed this £1400, then they either do not get paid, or they have to switch to multi track whish is for higher value cases.

The banning of referral fees should put a lot of these claims management firms out of business, as well as a lot of the dodgy law firms who were in bed with them, because it is clear that many of these law firms were not doing a proper risk assessment which is a requirement of the CFA and getting ATE insurance.

Suffice to say, the voice I spoke to soon realised that he was not talking to a lay person but someone who actually works in the profession (I did give him an unmerciless earbashing) and I have not been bugged by either a phone call or text message since