Action Orange - Problems with Orange and you want to take them to court

Archive for the ‘Other companies’ Category

I have now been contacted by a few people who have been victims of the Excell Communications scandal.

Begbies Traynor has been appointed as administrator for Excell Communications and has warned creditors  -  ‘Indications are that there are insufficient funds to make any payments to customers under any cashback agreements or transfer fees from previous airtime providers and any monies owed to [creditors] will be lost’.

It would appear that thousands of people are now left with huge phone bills to pay and no chance of recovering the hundreds of pounds due in cashback claims from the company.

I will be looking into this over the coming weeks with a view to contacting Orange to find out more information about what can be done to help all those people who have been thoroughly shafted!

Without even looking into the issue, it is my understanding ( from the information given to me by individuals ) that the contracts were entered into with Excell and not with Orange. Excell were selling these contracts on behalf of Orange and people entered into the contracts on the sole basis of Excell providing the cashback. The moment that the contract with Excell is broken ( they’ve gone bust and haven’t paid thousands of people so have automatically breached/broken their contracts ) then the cashback offer ceases and I personally would consider the associated contract with Orange null and void also!! It’s probably a complicated point of contract law and I will need to look into this further.

The reality is that none of Excell’ss clients would have entered into any agreement if they weren’t going to receive the cashback!

Please feel free to comment and correct me if my facts are wrong, and give me any helpful information you may have as one of Excell’s clients.

As part of my ongoing claim against Axa in the small claims court, I made a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act.

This meant Axa had to give me a copy of my COMPLETE file held in their records, including all internal notes and emails, call log of all calls made/received and a transcription or audio file of any recorded calls.

Unsuprsingly Axa were not able to comply with my request in full and failed to complete the Subject Access Request, even though I gave them extra time to investigate their failure to comply and the opportunity to obtain the missing data!

I guess that some people might see me taking on Axa as a foolish move; a David and Goliath struggle between massive corporate UK and tiny insignificant consumer.

It can be done and it can be done by anyone.

The secret in dealing with corporate UK is to be well documented at every opportunity, research the legislation, guidelines, rules and Laws that a company has to work within when dealing with you and exercise your rights!!

I had a very interesting mediation call(s) through the small claims court mediation service this morning.

The system works in the following way when opting for a mediation call. The mediator for the court rings each party in turn, in an attempt to reach a mutually agreeable conclusion/solution, rather than going to court.

The phone call went back and forth quite quickly and we agreed an amount of compensation, then at the final moment Axa threw a rather intriguing requirement into the equation. If they were going to pay me out of court, I had to agree that I would not contact ( a non-disclosure agreement basically ) the FSA ( Financial Services Authority ) or the ICO ( Information Commissioners Office ) after Axa’s blatant breach of their regulations and guidelines.

As a matter of principle this made me very uncomfortable that they should try and gagg me from complaining about their absolutely disgusting service in handling my claim. I had already stated my intention to contact these organisations and to be honest, I thought it my moral duty to do so. Someone had to take the moral high ground . . . . and it wasn’t going to be Axa!

How can a company address systematic failure of their service unless they accept they have a problem in the first instance?

SIMPLE - Axa will try and hide it by sweeping it under the carpet and attempt to buy my silence.

My silence is not for sale to a company who have treated me so badly over a 5 month period and are unwilling to accept they have a problem with the processing of their claims handling system.

Read the first part of my story here - Axa travel insurance scam and rip off

I bought single trip travel insurance with Axa when booking a flight with Ryanair to France in June 2010.

There was a delay due to an air traffic controllers strike coming back and I got to the airport to find a massive queue of angy and distraught people. I could instantly hear different people talking about the flight being cancelled due to the strike and by the time I got to the checkout all I was offered was a flight back to the UK on the following Tuesday ( it was Thursday afternoon ). I was told there was nothing else available as all the other people in front of me had booked everything up. NIGHTMARE!

I am self employed and had work commitments on Friday, Monday and Tuesday and could not afford to miss all those days off work. I managed to get another flight back on Saturday afternoon with BMI and arranged for my sister to come to Gatwick  pick me up and take me back home to Devon ( she’s a little angel ).

I obviously went and made a claim on my travel insurance immediately for the two extra nights stay, my extra flight to Gatwick, food and the travel costs to and from each airport.

Axa really put me through the mill trying to make this claim. They blatantly used stalling and time wasting tactics to try and wear me down over the 5/6 month period. I was ringing them on a weekly basis and emailing them all the time as well. It was a real nightmare dealing with them as it would often take anywhere from 2 - 4 weeks to get a response by email from them. I kept chasing and pushing and the most annoying thing was that they would ask for an individual receipt or question on each email. They wouldn’t look at my claim and ask all the questions in one go, they just dragged in out over months! The last three or four phone calls I made before starting legal action against them they would keep telling me my claim was ” in the final stages “; this was over a two month period! How long does it take to make a decision?

After I threatened legal action in December 2010 I suddenly got a payment of £80 into my bank. I was soooooo angry I couldn’t believe it. They wouldn’t give me an explanation or a breakdown of how they arrived at that amount and so I did the only thing left to me - court action.

I read the terms and conditions of the travel insurance quite carefully to make sure I was covered when I made the initial purchase. I’m more than aware that insurance companies will do anything to try and get out of paying you and was happy that I had the level of cover I needed from the insurance.

Axa had already breach their own terms of service in claims handling by not responding to me within the 5 working days ( their own guidelines for response times ) and I was sure they’d breached other guidelines and regulations as well.

I also did a little bit of research into standards within the Insurance industry, specifically relating to claims handling.

ICOBS ( Insurance Code of Business Sourcebook ) states quite clearly that the insurer should:

• handle claims promptly and fairly;
• provide reasonable guidance to help policyholders make a claim;
• not unreasonably reject a claim; and
• settle claims promptly once settlement terms are agreed

Well Axa failed on many levels to comply with ICOBS in the handling of my claim.

My case is set to be heard in April and despite not requesting mediation, I had a call from the court mediation service the other day and Axa now want to attempt to settle out of court. They think they’re going to get away with making a silly offer . . . . . but they’re going to be in for a shock!!

The intenet is littered with hundreds of people who’ve had nightmares trying to get Axa to honour travel insurance claims. Here’s a few links to some of Axa’s unhappy customers:

• http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews-all-75639.html
• http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/travel-insurance/axa-travel-insurance/reviews/
• http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/insurance/ask-an-expert/article.html?in_article_id=519614&in_page_id=136

Mediation call is in 2 weeks and will add the outcome to this post then.

Read about the outcome of my call here - Axa Mediation end in stalemate over non-disclosure issue

I recently had an interesting case where Shopdirect ended up settling out of court with me over a claim I made against them in the small claims court.

I originally purchased an Xbox 360 on a 12 months but now pay later scheme that Additions were running in January 2009. I went online, setup my account and bought the Xbox with a £25 pound discount and took advantage of the 12 months BNPL ( buy now pay later ) scheme. I received the terms and conditions through the post sometime in February/March , but was not happy with them and so consequently didn’t sign the agreement. I was rung by a CSR on a couple of ocassions but informed them that I wasn’t going to sign them as I wasn’t happy with them. I expected them to withdraw their offer to me and make me pay immediately, but never heard a thing back!

Anyway 11 months went past and I decided to go online and make the payment to get it all done and finished. I made the payment within the 12 months in January 2010. My online account showed the money paid and initially actually gave me a credit on my account, which subsequently disappeared the following month. I was happy the matter had been dealt with and forgot about it until I received a demand from Additions as I hadn’t made the minimum payment for March! I actually wrote to Additions ( that’s just a trading name of the Shopdirect Group ) and gave all the information, payment dates etc. I imagined that they’re had been a mistake on their behalf and the payment had not been entered on their system somewhere.

Then I get another letter 2 weeks later charging me £12 for the letter and £12 for a late payment charge plus a phone call from Shopdirect a couple of days later. So I go through and explain to the CSR on the phone that it’s all paid and sorted and nothing is owed. She says that according to her system I haven’t paid. So I write another letter detailing everything with proof and send it recorded delivery.

I continued to get these letters every two weeks until June when I snapped. I kept writing to them recorded delivery and NEVER once received a response to any of my letters. I know they got them as one time a CSR admitted to hving a copy of a least one of the letters on the system, but was still chasing me! I was being harassed by Shopdirect for money I didn’t owe on the phone and by letter and was being chased by debt collection companies for an amount that had been paid in January. Coupled to all that, Shopdirect decided they needed to notify te credit reference agencies that I had defaulted on my payment!!!

I decided to take them to court under a breach of contract, breach of the Protection from Harassment and falsely registering a bad debt against me to recoup my loss of earnings having to deal with everything over a 5/6 month period and compensation for my suffering.

The case was eventually scheduled to be heard at the end of January 2011. Amazingly I had a phone call at the beginning of January from a senior manager at Shopdirect who was dealing with the case and admintted liability over the phone and stated that he didn’t want to go to court but would like to settle before the court date.
After a little bit of toing and foing and a few silly offers from Shopdirect, I ended up with almost exactly the amount I was claiming.

Justice was served