Anatomy of a Claim

Sometimes we pay for goods or services that fail to meet our expectations and we feel that the company or person should make amends. This happened to us recently on a holiday, booked with Thomson Holidays, we had paid extra for a service that we felt was not up to scratch. It was only a few hundred pounds all the other aspects of the holiday were fine and I am only posting this because there are many who would not bother to claim, thinking it would be hassle and time consuming. For my part I don’t like to see anyone getting away with supplying shoddy goods or services so, in case you don’t know already, I will show you just how easy it is to claim. The first step is taken while you are still on holiday, you may need to show that you have given those involved a chance to put things right. We complained to the hotel/apartments reception about the service. Nothing changed so we informed the hotel reception and the holiday rep that we were no longer going to use the service and would be making a claim for compensation when we returned home. On our return I wrote a brief letter outlining the details of the complaint and the amount of compensation we were claiming; this was sent by email and surface mail. You need to show that you mean business but without being pompous or using pseudo-legalise language that will make you sound like a prat. However, it is a good idea to put WITHOUT PREJUDICE at the top of all correspondence, it makes it sound like you know what you are doing and means that you cannot be held to whatever you put in the letter, for instance you may want to increase the amount you are claiming. Never, ever phone them, when you finally get through the menu and spend 20 minutes listening to canned music you will speak to someone whose first language is not English and they will give you the run around. Put everything in writing and when they phone you, which they will, ask them to put any offers in writing also, email is fine just so long as you have a record, don’t delete it! In our case they made an offer but it was not enough. As they were members of ABTA the next step was to involve them. There is a very simple form you can fill in inline, you already have the claim details in Word to copy and paste. They contact their member to see if they will improve their offer, in this case they wouldn’t. You then have a choice to go to independent arbitration via ABTA or use the Small Claims Procedure in The County Court. I have been involved in this several times both as claimant and defendant, it is not as daunting as it sounds. My gut reaction was to go with the Courts so I can’t say what the outcome would have been via the arbitration route. However, the Court fees are much less than the fee for arbitration and again I think it shows that you mean business and are not intimidated by the prospect of going to Court. It is unlikely that it will actually go to Court but if does you can also claim further costs such as travel loss of earnings. Again there is simple form to fill in initially, the Court will inform the defendant and they have about 28 days to file a defense. It is not unknown for them to ignore this or to file a defense and then not turn up for the hearing, in which case it would automatically be found in your favour. They don’t want hassle any more than you do and nine times out of ten, so long as you are not taking the piss with your claim, they will offer to settle out of court. That is what happened in this case and we ended up with three times what they had offered in the first place. The cheque arrived today folks! It has actually taken me longer to write this post than it did to make the claim, so you are very privileged.