Anyone have any experience of 'no win no fee' with Carpenters Solicitors?

[Letmegetoff]

Hi

My husband had a car accident in April and was contacted my Carpenters Insurance to deal with the injury claim.

He had some back pain after the accident which started to ease a lot so he cancelled the agreement (they were also very pushy and bombarded him with phone calls which was really off-putting and another reason he did not want to carry on with the claim) with carpenters via email. I still have the emails and I'm almost certain they were sent within the 14 day cooling off period.

Today an email has come through from carpenters that says...

We refer to the above matter.
I note that you have not responded to my previous correspondence and failed to attend the medical appointment
and have therefore breached the terms of the Conditional Fee (No Win–No Fee) Agreement between us and I
write to inform you that the agreement is now terminated with immediate effect.
As I do not have your instructions, I am professionally compromised and as I do not have any security as to your
legal costs, I am to close your file of papers immediately.
Your file will now be passed to our costs Debt Recovery Department and this Firm shall shortly be sending you a
bill in respect of the costs and disbursements this Firm has incurred whilst pursuing this matter on your behalf.
Finally I am duty bound to inform you that if by the third anniversary of your accident, if County Court
proceedings have not been issued at Court this will render your case being statute barred in accordance with the
Limitations Act 1980.

I cannot find the original paperwork of when the agreement started but I am sure it was within the cooling off period. A medical appt was never confirmed because we had already sent the cancellation email.

What is likely to happen next, I'm really quite worried and only saw the email after they closed so can't call until tomorrow

.

https://www.yell.com/biz/carpenters-group-birkenhead-8905893/

These people?

Yeah that's them

There's an email address from another unhappy customer and it's all recent, I'd start by emailing that person.

Those reviews are shocking 😫nobody has a good word to say about them, I really don't understand how firms like this can continue trading.

We feel like idiots for getting involved with them but the insurers just put you through to them like it's all part of the process you have to follow

From those reviews I think I'll be lucky to even get a copy of the original contract from them

You need the legal ombudsman https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/public/for-public-visitors/using-a-solicitor/complain-about-a-solicitor#:~:text=You%20can%20contact%20the%20Legal%20Ombudsman%20by%3A,enquiries%40legalombudsman.org.uk

Get together copies of everything, every email in chronological order, anything you’ve signed etc..

I only have the email I sent cancelling. We were only involved with them very briefly and felt put off by the amount of calls. I don't have a copy of the contract because it was posted.

They has a medical examiner calling before the contract had even been signed, literally multiple calls a day.

From the reviews it seems once they have you on board They then become impossible to get in touch with.

I will have to get a copy of everything from them, do they have to do this under the freedom of information act?

Thanks for that info, looks like I have to complain to the solicitor first before the ombudsman gets involved so I will definitely keep that in mind

You can do a Subject Access Request to ask for a cooy of the original agreement and all your correspondence if they won't provide you with it. Look at the ICO website.

You should send them a complaint letter first and could include the SAR in that to speed things up. If no joy then escalate to the Ombudsman/ICO after their time limits have expired.

Oh, and deny any liability for their claim in the complaint letter as well, it's up to them to prove it

They contacted me as I have recently been in a non fault accident, I’ve not had any losses as paid out so told them I’m not interested, they keep calling, I googled them and their reviews are appalling

If you cancelled the no win no fee agreement originally then you've nothing to worry about. Respond to the email and attach a copy of your previous email confirming the cancellation.

I used to work for this type of firm and the majority of people wasted our time by speaking to us about an accident then changing their mind but instead of telling us they just stopped taking our calls. We weren't allowed to close files until the agreement had been terminated either by us or the client because we could find ourselves liable for failing to act and so it resulted in months of chasing by telephone and email. No one seemed to understand that if they just gave us the instructions we were asking for we could close the file, everyone seems to think things like this are a scam despite them being the ones to agree to it in the first place 🤷‍♀️