Have you instructed a firm to represent you who are taking a percentage from your claim only to find out that we can give you a 100% agreement? If so, then read on…
Unfortunately, the recent law changes that have come in to force from April 2013 have resulted in other solicitors taking up to 25% from their client’s payout and asking for payment of insurance. Even worse is that most solicitors are potentially miss-advising people in our opinion by telling people things like “no one offers 100% compensation anymore” or that “everyone is taking 25%” and people are trusting in their advice. Many of our clients who shopped around before finding our 100% offer were told things like the above, which is pretty scary stuff!
To confirm, we are still offering 100% compensation for most accident types.
So what happens if you only find out about our offer of 100% compensation when you have already instructed a law firm to act for you? Can you change or cancel with them and come over to us and save yourself potentially thousands of pounds by keeping all of your payout?
What you need to find out!
The above scenario is very common – we are taking on high volumes of claims anyway due to our unique 100% compensation offer, but we are equally getting a lot of enquiries from people who have fallen for the ‘25% trap‘ and have now realised they could keep all of their payout with us.
Whether we can assist depends on a number of things. You need to find out the following:
- Have you signed an agreement?
- Have you verbally instructed a solicitor but have yet to sign an agreement?
- If the accident happened after 31st July 2013 for non road accidents, have they submitted your Claim Notification Form?
If the answer to all of the above is yes, then there may be difficulties unfortunately. If you have yet to sign anything or they have yet to submit the Claim Notification Form, there may still be hope yet.
If the accident happened before 31st July 2013 for non road accidents, it could depend more on what agreement is in place. You also need to find out the following:
Cooling Off Period?
Is there a cooling off period? If instructions were taken over the phone, the Distant Selling Regulations normally mean you may have seven days to cancel instructions without charge so long as you have not waived your right to cancel but instructing work to be carried out. You should also note that cancellations normally must be done in writing within the timeframe, and some agreements may allow more than seven days.
Were you miss-advised?
If they miss-advised you that no one is offering 100% compensation then there could be an argument for that. It could be difficult though, as it’s the paperwork that you ultimately agree to. But the obvious point remains that solicitors should not be incorrectly advising you at all when it comes to funding arrangements. Many just assume that everyone take the full 25% from their clients compensation.
Can you transfer?
You may be able to transfer the case meaning your original lawyer can still be paid for the work incurred up until the point of transfer. For years this has been pretty easy to do, but now it could be a little uncertain because they may still want to take something from your payout as we cannot recover all of their fees due to the changes. We would have to get them to agree to this.
Another issue though is that there is a fixed fee system for most claims that happened after 31st July 2013 so it may be even more difficult as lawyers will need to share a very low fixed fee which may make it unviable for us to take the case over from a commercial perspective.
It seems I could be stuck…
Unfortunately, that may well be the case. So if you’re reading this before you have set in stone your instructions with a lawyer, take heed of these warnings and carefully consider who you instruct! You don’t want to end up losing a quarter of your compensation when we can give you the whole lot!
