Review of Cartel Client Review - Avoid Scams With Our Unbiased Reviews

CARTEL CLIENT REVIEW
Cartel Client Review Ltd
Building 7
Exchange Quay
Manchester
M5 3EP
www.cartelclientreview.co.uk
Tel: 0845 0711 500

- Extract from sales copy
- Review
- Your feedback

Extract from sales copy:

Recruitment:
Cartel Client Review Sales Representatives

A fantastic opportunity has arisen to join a company whose level of experience and service in the financial industry ensures your clients are in safe hands.

We are looking for confident, self-motivated, sales driven individuals to join the expanding sales force.

Experience in sales is not essential, as full training and ongoing support will be provided.

Working from home your role involves visits to clients' homes. A full driving licence and own transport is essential, as is the ability to work flexible hours.

For your dedication and commitment you will also receive:

This is a fantastic opportunity for an ambitious, entrepreneurial and sales driven individual who is dedicated to offering a totally unique service to their clients, which can produce seriously high levels of income.

To apply for this fantastic opportunity please contact:

Business Development Manager -Tel: 07828 079626

Please note that, due to the high volume of response for this vacancy, only candidates who show evidence of meeting the strict criteria set will be contacted

Rating Review:

Cartel Client Review have been recruiting heavily for sales representatives and - judging from the number of individual websites which show up on Google if you key in the search terms "Cartel Client Review Representatives" - they have been having quite a bit of success.

As a sales representative of Cartel Client Review, you would obtain for your clients "financial compensation as a result of invalid, unenforceable or fundamentally flawed consumer credit agreements. These include mortgage, secured loan and motor finance contracts. Working closely with solicitors, auditors and other professionals, Cartel Client Review provides a service designed to assist our Clients claiming a settlement within 6 to 12 months of their claim being accepted by our panel."

Your job would be to forward details of your clients' loans to Cartel Client Review to see if they qualified for compensation. Normally within 24 hours, your client would receive a report from Cartel Client Review's internal underwriting (vetting) department stating which products qualify for a claim, and your client would then decide which claims to proceed with.

The client then has to pay Cartel Client Review £495 in advance as a Review Fee to take the case forward, although this fee is discounted to £175 for a credit card or personal unsecured loan if you are proceeding with a claim for another £495 product, and there is no Review Fee for repossession prevention.

Review Fees are fully refundable if the case cannot be pursued for any reason, and Cartel tells us that they have refunded hundreds of clients where claims have been assessed as having less than reasonable prospects of success. We previously stated incorrectly that these fees were not refundable, and we apologise for this error and any damage it may have caused.

The standard advice is that it is risky to pay a fee for a service in advance - particularly where the results of this service could take up to a year to be achieved. This risk is, of course, reduced where the fees are refundable but it's still not entirely eliminated unless they are backed by an insurance bond or they're kept in a separate client account from which they cannot be released for expenditure by the company until the service has been performed.

What about the terms for people wanting to join the business opportunity offered by Cartel Client Review? These sound very fair since there is no cost to join as such, apart from the cost of an "Induction Training Day" at £29.30, Business Cards costing £35.25, and a monthly fee for the software of £17.57 including VAT.

As an agent, you receive a commission of £125 for each product you sell where a £495 fee applies. The main financial reward for agents, however, is the 30% commission they hope to receive on their clients' Success Fees.

For successful claims, 30% of any monies recovered are paid to Cartel Client Review as a Success Fee, except for motor finance and repossession mortgage claims where no Success Fee is payable and for repossession compensation claims where a reduced success fee of 5% applies.

Cartel Client Review Ltd is quite correctly registered with the Ministry of Justice as a company offering a Claims Management service.

According to the Cartel Client Review website (see the "history" page) Carl Wright has been a spokesman for "mis-selling" scandals" in the press as follows:

in Mortgage Strategy October 2005 Carl Wright predicted that "The sub-prime market is in crisis and runs the risk of becoming the next big mis-selling scandal".

As you would expect for a "top IFA", Carl Wright is recorded on the FSA Register. Curiously, though, his status is categorised as inactive.

Unfortunately, following this publicity in late 2005, Carl Wright was soon to have problems of his own. On 17th September 2007 his company Cartel Marketing Ltd was compulsorily wound up in the High Court under the Insolvency Act. It was soon followed by another Cartel company, Cartel International Limited which was likewise compulsorily wound up in the High Court on 14th October 2007 under the Insolvency Act, having changed its name to Quay Communications and Services Ltd.

Carl Wright had resigned as a director of Cartel International Ltd on 18th January 2006.

Carl Wright remains the sole director of Cartel Marketing Ltd, all of the other directors having resigned. One of the last directors of Cartel Marketing Ltd to resign was Sharon Yvette Sherratt, on 2nd August 2007. On the same day, Carl Wright resigned as the sole director of Cartel Client Review Ltd and Sharon Yvette Sherratt became the sole director in his place.

Cartel Client Review Ltd has share capital of just £10. Although it was set up over 10 years ago in 1998 it never traded until late 2007. It's unusual that, having carefully complied with all the statutory requirements for a dormant company for nearly 10 years, as soon as the company sprang into action Carl Wright resigned his directorship.

I'm mindful to give this company a low rating, not just because of the failure of a couple of Cartel companies in the past - anyone can run into trading problems - but also because of Carl Wright's unusual choice not to accept statutory responsibility for Cartel Client Review Ltd by not being a director and because of the company's terms of trade whereby they ask members of the public to pay a high fee per case in advance.

Questions on Cartel Client Review

I had a couple of questions about Cartel Client Review to which I was unable to find the answers, so I wrote to the company on 5th May 2008 as follows:

I came across a posting on a forum from a lady who states that she was told by a representative of your company that the fee for dealing with a claim for compensation for mis-selling in respect of her credit card would incur an initial fee of £125 and also, if any of the balance on her card was written off or charges were refunded, Cartel Client Review would take a further fee of 30% of any monies recovered.

I should be grateful if you would confirm that this lady was mistaken about the further fee, since the “Terms of Business” letter displayed on your website makes no mention of any fees apart from the initial fee.
I understand that there are two possible self-employed sales positions with your company.

a) Firstly, to become a Representative involves costs of £29.30 for the Induction Training Day, plus £35.25 for business cards and £17.57 per month for software. Commissions receivable on sales made by the Representative amount to £125 for each case of a mortgage, secured loan or car finance review plus a bonus for each completed case payable on 20th December of £150.

b) Secondly, a Master Agency is available, for which the cost is £5,000 + VAT. The Master Agent receives commissions not only on his own sales, but also on the sales of people he has recruited to his team. Could you please confirm that this is correct, and also forward a copy of the Agreement for the Master Agency. Could you please also confirm that this Agreement complies with the UK Trading Schemes Regulations as required.

A failure to comply with the UK Trading Schemes Regulations would be a criminal offence. No doubt Cartel Client Review does comply, but why isn't there any indication on their website, such as the Statutory Warning?

Here's the link to useful explanatory from the DTI (now the BERR) about the Trading Schemes Regulations:

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file24757.pdf

Despite sending a follow-up reminder, I had no reply from Cartel Client Review to this May 2008 letter. However, as Cartel pointed out to me on 3rd November 2009, for credit card contracts their website did state that a fee was payable to Cartel of 30% of the total of interest repaid, payments returned and balance cleared. I apologise to Cartel Client Review for any damage that may have been caused by this error ... although it's a pity they did not reply when I questioned them about this in May 2008.

As regards the second question above, Cartel told me that they "can confirm that the Cartel Rolling Sales Agreements are fully compliant with Trading Schemes Regulations having been compiled and maintained with assistance and advice from solicitors specialising in this area". Oddly, two Master Agents have both told me that they have two contracts each - one of which does not comply with the Trading Schemes Regulations and one which does. In addition, I have two Rolling Sales Agreements for "The Representative", neither of which comply. Mistakes, obviously.

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BOW Notice: A zero score or a low score means that in our opinion the business model or the investment model has flaws and/or that we have found inadequate evidence to back up claims about earnings, sales, profits etc. It doesn't mean this evidence does not exist and it doesn't mean that the promoters are unprofessional or dishonest. Questions arising are normally contained within the body of the review, and readers who are interested should contact the company with these questions and/or questions of their own.

_________________________________

Update 18th October 2009

Cartel Client Review
Carl Wright
Consumer Credit Litigation Solicitors aka Burleys, Richard J. Burley, Karl A. Berry

Cartel Client Review says on their website that they had ten thousand Client Reviews in progress in July 2008 and for which the company has been paid.

How many of these claims have been successfully completed is unknown, although an unhappy Master Agent who contacted me said that he had not had a single one of his "many hundreds of cases" completed and he had been involved as a Master Agent for over two years, and another Agent who contacted me had over 200 claims with no completions.

Certainly, if Cartel Client Review had had a good proportion of their credit card claims completed by January of this year, then it is surprising that they did not forward these details to the Advertising Standards Authority in defence of a complaint by a member of the public over a radio ad for Cartel's credit card review service. The listener challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied that a person had a good chance of having their credit card debts written off if they had taken the credit card out before April 2007, because they believed the circumstances in which that was possible were limited. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the ad was misleading and that it must not be broadcast again in its current form because they considered that they had not seen evidence that demonstrated the number of Cartel Client Review's clients that had successfully won their claim to have their credit card debts written off, or that showed what proportion of their total client base the successful clients represented.

Cartel Client Review, however, contacted me on 3rd November 2009 to say that they "strongly refute" any suggestion that only a few claims have been concluded to date.

There certainly seems to be no doubt that Cartel achieves successes every few days with the loan and credit card agreements it challenges on behalf of its clients. According to the blog on the company's website at www.cartelclientreview.co.uk, in the two-week period from 14th October to 27th October 2009 it had six successes as follows:

Presumably, these cases are only a small sample of the cases which Cartel is completing each day because, with ten thousand claims in progress as at July 2008, that would imply that 27 claims would be needed to be completed each day to clear them ... unless a large proportion of the ten thousand claims were rejected.

Writing off credit card balances and other unsecured loans

I find it worrying that a lot of members of the public have paid Cartel Client Review audit fees of £495 in the expectation that their loans will be written off when this cannot be said with any certainty until various cases have been heard by the courts.

However, Cartel Client Review says as follows:

Cartel Client Review's solicitors, Consumer Credit Litigation Solicitors, have a website at www.consumercreditlitigationsolicitors.co.uk. I could not find the name of the firm of solicitors on the website, which I found odd because solicitors these days are normally keen on publicity. However, I was able to identify the firm from the Law Society registration number at the foot of each page on the site. This registration number corresponds to a firm called Burleys Solicitors, whose head office is in Manchester and which has another branch in Newark, Nottinghamshire. Two Burleys partners' names are also given on the contact page of the website - Richard J. Burley, who is the senior partner, and Karl A. Berry, another partner. Burleys is a reasonable size, with 19 solicitors and lawyers at the Manchester office and 3 at the Newark office.

Burleys' website at www.consumercreditlitigationsolicitors.co.uk is an odd one because, despite having been live since July 2008, most of the pages on the site simply say "Coming Soon ...". Unusually for a firm of solicitors, even the Terms and Conditions and the Legal Disclaimer are "Coming Soon ...", in addition to most of the other pages on Burleys' website, i.e. those headed Form of Authority, Claimant Identification Sheet, Alternative Funding Questionnaire, Conditional Fee Arrangement Verbal Explanation, Solicitor's Introduction and Explanation Letter and Conditional Fee Arrangement.

Burleys' Recruitment page, however, does contain an enlightening few lines. It says:

Clients of Cartel Client Review whose credit card debt or loan debt is written off might find that it's not such an advantage as they had hoped. Firstly, there is the 30% fee payable to Cartel, and secondly there is the question of the effect on their credit record.

Regarding the 30% fee, it's true that some cases might result in the claimant (i.e. you) receiving a compensation payment in cash in addition to your loan or debt being written off, but that's not normally the case. Normally, you would receive no cash payment. So you could end up having jumped from the frying pan into the fire, having exchanged a credit card debt or a loan of, say, £10,000 that you can repay in instalments over years for a debt of £3,000 which you are required to repay immediately. And if your credit record is poor, then you probably couldn't borrow this fee from elsewhere.

Cartel Client Review points out that you have 70% less debt than previously and they also say that they will work, and have worked, with clients in cases where there is genuine difficulty to meet any conditional fee arrangement.

Regarding the effect on your credit record, the recent High Court decision in the case of Royal Bank of Scotland v McGuffick confirmed that you are still liable for the debt even if it is declared unenforceable. Mr. Justice Flaux ruled: "although the [Consumer Credit Act] may render the agreement unenforceable, the agreement remains a valid and subsisting contract and rights and obligations under it continue to exist". Mr. Justice Flaux also ruled on what "enforcement" means. He said that it does not mean reporting the debtor to credit reference agencies or demanding payment from the debtor or bringing proceedings.

Here's a link to the judgement in Royal Bank of Scotland v McGuffick:

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/judgments_guidance/mcguffick-v-rbs.pdf

and here's a link to the Case Report from Stone Chambers, where Andrew Moran QC who acted for Mr. McGuffick is an Associate Member:

http://www.stonechambers.com/cases/phillip-mcguffick-v-the-royal-bank-of-scotland-plc--2009--ewhc-2386---consumer-credit.asp

and here's a link to a Times article headed "High Court decision on debt loophole dashes write-off hopes for thousands":

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/
banking_and_finance/article6868968.ece

This decision means that the only way to protect your credit rating is to keep making repayments.

If your agreement is held to be unenforceable, then it seems that the only thing that the lender can't do is to send in the bailiffs, but there is nothing to stop them reporting you to credit reference agencies, demanding payment from you and even bringing proceedings.

Overall, then, the conclusion is that if you don't repay a loan - whether enforceable or unenforceable - then you are likely to damage your credit record and - due to the requirement to pay 30% of any amount written off as a fee to Cartel which is payable immediately - could still be in financial difficulties and reliant on Cartel's generosity and understanding to give them time to pay.

Cartel points out that they have never advised their clients to cease making payments on debts until they are confirmed as being unenforceable, and to the best of their knowledge no Cartel client who has had their debt "written off" has been left with a black mark on their credit rating as the result of this process. Cartel's interpretation of the McGuffick v RBS case is as follows:

The DIY alternative

We named five companies in the previous version of this report as giving a low-cost service for consumers wanting to find out if their loans could be written off. We don't know what the reasons were in the individual cases, but three of these companies do not currently hold authorisation with the Ministry of Justice and so they are not now offering these services. Normally, as regular readers of our reviews will know, we try to provide details of alternative sources of the same or similar offers. But in view of the decimation of our previous list of alternative providers of financial claims services, we're not going to attempt that again. Instead, as an alternative, we suggest that if you want to find out if your credit card debt or your unsecured loan debt can be written off, why not do it yourself?

If you are currently paying for ppi insurance in connection with a credit card or loan and you believe that either you never requested it and/or it was not disclosed to you that the credit card company or loan company would receive commission on the ppi insurance then you too, like Mrs. Thorius, might be able to get a refund of the ppi insurance premiums you have paid.

If you don't feel that you can handle this yourself, then you can get a firm like Cartel Client Review to do it for you, but this will cost you 30% of the refund. Otherwise, get ready to write some letters and have a look at the following websites which show you how to do it for yourself:

Update on Cartel Client Review's statutory position

Cartel Client Review's statutory position, as shown on records at Companies House, reveals some interesting new twists and surprises.

Firstly, after having been dormant from 1998 when it was incorporated until 31st July 2007, Cartel Client Review filed its first accounts for the period from 1st August 2007 to 30th September 2008. Surprisingly, since the company's website says "Cartel Client Review is probably the UK’s largest and fastest growing financial claims management company", these accounts recorded a substantial loss of £563,003.

Secondly, there have been some musical chairs with the directorships. Carl Wright was appointed as the sole director of Cartel Client Review when the company was incorporated in 1998 and then, after nine years during which the company was dormant, he resigned as a director on 2nd August 2007 two days after it sprang into action. He was replaced as the company's sole director by Sharon Yvette Sherratt. Carl Wright was re-appointed as a director on 16th June 2008 and on 1st September 2009 Sharon Yvette Sherratt resigned as director, leaving Carl Wright once more as the sole director of Cartel Client Review Ltd.

There have been some other changes, too. Cartel Client Review has just ten issued shares of £1 each. Previously, all of these were held by Carl Wright's wife Olivia. However, she disposed of them all to Carl Wright on 2nd October 2008.

More recently, on 21st August 2009 two unusual charges were registered against Cartel Client Review Ltd at Companies House. The first charge is a debenture in favour of Carl Wright personally covering all present and future obligations and liabilities of the company towards him. Under this debenture, there are fixed charges over the company's freehold and leasehold property, all of its plant and machinery etc, all its investments, all proceeds of insurances and "all its rights, title, interest and benefit in and to the Collections Accounts". Under this debenture there is also a floating charge over "all its assets and undertaking whatsoever and wheresoever situated both present and future".

It's very odd that someone who is the sole director and sole shareholder of a company for which only six months previously he had provided the company's auditors with "prepared forecasts which indicate the company will trade profitably in the ensuing year and will continue to generate positive cash flows" would feel the need for such an unusual step as taking out a debenture against his own company in favour of himself.

This debenture has a number of implications, including the fact that Cartel Client Review will not now find it easy to raise finance, if required, because it has no assets to offer to a lender as reasonable security.

And that's not the end of it. A second charge was also drawn up and registered on the same date, this time in favour of Carl Wright and MJF SSAS Trustees Ltd together as trustees of Cartel Pension Scheme One, in connection with a loan of £300,000 from the pension scheme to Cartel Client Review Ltd. This time, Cartel Client Review assigned to the trustees of the pension scheme as security a long list of about 600 claims being dealt with by Burleys, each identified by a reference number, together with the payment of Referral Fees and any monies that may become payable to the company in connection with the Claims.

600 claims given as security for a loan of £300,000 means that on average each claim is valued at only £500 for the purposes of the security. This seems very low, because of course the value of these claims is the 30% fee which would be earned from their successful conclusion. For the purposes of the security, then, either the view was taken that a fair proportion of these claims would not succeed or the average amount expected to be written off (in the case of credit card or loan debts) or recovered (in the case of ppi insurance refunds) is only £1,667 (i.e. £500 divided by 30%). Perhaps the answer is that this list of claims mainly consists of ppi claims where the claimants have only been paying £25 or £30 a month for 5 or 6 years, which would mean that they had paid out only approx. £1,500/£2,000.

Still interested in joining Cartel Client Review as a representative?

In addition to reading the above review from the May 2008 edition of Business Opportunity Watch (and, if you are interested in a Master Agency, verifying for yourself that the agreement is compliant with the UK Trading Schemes Regulations), I advise anyone interested in joining Cartel Client Review to talk to as many people already in it as possible (you can find contact details by doing a search on the Internet). I have heard some representatives of claims management firms saying that it is easy to make a few sales initially to people who know and trust you, but after that it gets more difficult because of the upfront fee. Clearly, therefore, it is important to have good sales skills, in addition to being committed and persistent in marketing your business.

In my view, however, it is risky to market the credit card/loan write off service at this stage before the various cases currently going through the courts have reached their conclusion, because you could find yourself saddled with some unhappy customers. You would also, of course, need to market it transparently to your potential customers as regards their need for funding for the success fee and as regards the potential damage to their credit rating if they don't repay the loan.

_________________________________

Update 28th November 2009

Cartel Client Review
Carl Wright
Agents' agreements and the Trading Scheme Regulations
Clawback of commissions

I recently had an email from someone who had just attended one of Cartel's training courses. He wanted to flag to me that any commission paid in respect of
unenforceable credit commitments may be reclaimed from Cartel agents at any time in the future if the case does not proceed to a successful conclusion. He felt that this alone made the whole earnings process with Cartel very risky as an agent might find that he suffers a claw-back of most or even all the commission he has earned.

The author of the email confirmed to me, as have people who have attended Cartel's training courses in the past, that the prospect of receiving commission from building a team was a major part of the training and incentive presentation. In my view, however, the fact that in the wording of the contract Cartel may have given themselves the right to reclaim commission paid to agents is irrelevant. As mentioned above - link - legally, it seems to me that Cartel would not have an unrestricted right to do so because their whole scheme - both for agents and master agents - falls under the Trading Schemes Regulations because, in the words of the Trading Schemes Act 1996, it "applies to any trading scheme if ... the prospect is held out to participants of receiving payments or other benefits in respect of ... the introduction by any person of other persons who become partipants in a trading scheme ... the supply of goods or services by any person to or for other persons" etc.

Under the Trading Scheme Regulations, agents are legally entitled to certain protections and benefits and these ought to be reflected in their contracts. However, they are entitled to them by law regardless of what the contract says. These benefits are set out in the DTI booklet The Trading Schemes Guide at the following link:

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file24757.pdf

Agents' benefits include the fact that commissions can only be clawed back on
termination of their contract, and even then they can only be clawed back
for the previous 90 days.

I have contacted Cartel to ask them to respond on this point.

_________________________________

Your feedback:

Have you tried this opportunity?

If you would like to comment on it please send us an email. Your feedback will then be posted here anonymously unless you tell us that you want your contact details included.

Feedback 19 January 2010 from Exagent:

Hi Marian,

In brief, I was a Cartel agent but only put though my case and the in-law's case because Carl Wright, to me, did not come across as a responsible person on the training/sales day. It seemed to me that his main focus was to get his audience excited about how much they can earn rather than what is best for the clients. One of the things he was suggesting is that if people didn’t have the up-front money for their cases they should put the Cartel fees on their credit card and then put that card though for claim – How irresponsible it that?

Between the 2 of us we put through 5 claims and all have been rejected despite being told of a 99+% of success. And some 19 months on we are still awaiting our refunds despite many attempts to recover it!!

On the basis of my own experience, I am worried that a lot of people may lose out with Cartel, apart from Carl Wright who seems to have his arse covered.

Regards
Exagent

Editorial reply to Exagent:

In fact, it was good advice to tell people to pay their Cartel fees by credit card because they are covered by section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. Under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, the bank issuing the credit card is jointly liable with Cartel. This means that anyone who can show that there has been breach of contract (failure to make refunds despite the claims being rejected) can require the credit card company to refund them if the Cartel has not refunded them. All you need to do is to write to your credit card company as follows:

Refer to the credit card company's joint liability for the payment to Cartel Client Review under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

Give your credit card number and state the amount and date of the transaction.

Enclose some evidence of the refund requests you have made to Cartel.

Enclose the following two pieces of documentation from the Cartel Client Review website:

a. Frequently Asked Questions

Print off page one of:

http://www.cartelclientreview.co.uk/faqs.aspx

and highlight the text under question 2 which says:

"The review fee is refunded should a claim be unsuccessful (subject to Terms and Conditions)."

b. Terms and Conditions

Print off a copy of the Terms and Conditions here:

http://www.cartelclientreview.co.uk/remote/files/
cartel_client_review_terms_and_conditions.pdf

and highlight paragraph 4(a) which says:

"(a) If during the provision of the Services You have an Unsuccessful Claim, You will be given the option to transfer the Review Fee (but not a deferred Review Fee) to another Product. If You confirm that You do not wish to transfer the Review Fee that You have paid We will refund it to You within a reasonable period of time, which will not exceed thirty (30) days."

Send the letter by Recorded Delivery.

Note that you can still make this claim even if your credit card has been cancelled, and you have six years to make a claim under section 75.

Do not be surprised or discouraged if the first letter you receive from the credit card company reads like a standard rebuffal letter. Sadly, we have heard that some banks routinely send out a refusal letter as their first reply, apparently regardless of the merit of the claim. If this happens, then write back to the credit card company saying that they do not seem to have looked at your claim properly and ask them to now look at it properly and refund you within 14 days so that you do not have to make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman.

If you still do not receive satisfaction, then complain to the Financial Ombudsman here:

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/complaints.htm

Hope this helps.
Marian

Feedback 20th January 2010 from InterestOnly:

Hi

I had an interest only mortgage for approximately 6 years (2000 to 2006) before transferring to another lender.

About a year ago I submitted details of the initial loan to Cartel/Consumer Credit Litigation Solicitors for their consideration for a possible refund but have heard nothing since I submitted further details in October to the above mentioned solicitors.

Thus I paid my loan in full for 6 years before moving on to another lender. In the event (it seems slight now) of getting anything back from that loan agreement, or not as the case may more likely be, where does that leave me in respect of Cartel and any charges? I recall paying a modest fee at the outset to them by way of a cheque, and was told 'no refund no further fee' but do you have any thoughts on that?

Regards
InterestOnly

Editorial Reply to InterestOnly:

The terms of service for Cartel Client review to deal with a claim for a mortgage seem to be at this link:

This suggests that the fee you paid was £495. Is this right? Also, according to the Terms and Conditions, it seems that you are entitled to a refund within 30 days if your claim is unsuccessful.

If my understanding is correct, then you could try sending a Recorded Delivery letter to the solicitors saying that since you have not heard from them for four months you assume that your claim is unsuccessful and therefore you would like a full refund within 30 days, failing which you will complain to the Law Society.

I am not sure what grounds you (or they) had for believing that you might be able to get money back from your loan agreement. Certainly a lot of new companies have jumped on the bandwagon and opened for business, asking customers to pay them a fee in advance, and a lot of them seem to have little experience.

If you did still want to pursue the possibility of getting money back on your loan, it is difficult to know which company to approach. However, I have found a couple which - by pure coincidence - are local to me. The reason why I have chosen to give you the contact details of these companies is because they are run by people with good experience and credentials - and people whose opinions are quoted from time to time in the press (but then so is Carl Wright of Cartel!!). Obviously, you should satisfy yourself that you are happy with these firm's credentials and the service they offer before you pay them.

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