If you decide to pursue a claim against a trader, you must follow the steps in ‘If it Has Gone Wrong’ to comply with the law. If you don’t, you could jeopardise any court case you later want to raise.
Content
- Check their assets
- Mediation
- Identify the right court route
- Can you claim a bank refund?
- Financial Ombudsman – WIP
Check their assets
you need to understand if a claim is wroth pursuing. Does the tradesperson have assets that can be claimed against?
Company Type
Are you dealing with a sole trader or a limited company (Ltd)?
Sole traders have unlimited liability, so therefore if they have assets, such as property in their name or equipment in their name and owned by them, then there is potentially money to be claimed against, if they own their own property/assets.
Limited companies have limited liability, this means that the liability for any issues stops with the company and cannot be transferred to an individual, therefore a trader can dissolve their company and therefore have no assets to be claimed against.
If the company has a default address, which is currently
- PO Box 4385, Company number, Cardiff, CF14 8LH
The main reasons for this address is that either a person or business has complained that the company is not authorised to use the address they provided. This could indicate that you have an issue with your trader.
Top tips:
If you are dealing with a limited company and you think they are about to go into liquidation and they owe you money, you can apply to Companies House to the company being struck off the register of companies.
You can also make contact with the liquidator and ask to be listed as a creditor to the company.
Resources
https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/strike-off-objections
Check for CCJ’s against the person/trader
One way to check a company’s or person’s history is to run a County Court Judgement (CCJ) check.
Resources
Check the land registry
If your trader is a sole trader, you can check the land registry to see if they own property. This costs £7.
You will need to know your traders name and home address to do this.
Resources
https://www.gov.uk/search-property-information-land-registry
Identify the right court route
- £0 – £10,000: Small claims court. You can bring this claim yourself with no help from a solicitor, it is designed for the lay person.
- £10,000 – £25,000: Fast track court system. You will most likely need help from a solicitor to pursue this course of action.
- £25,000 and over: Multi track court system.
All are part of the county court system, you will be allocated a track based on the value you are claiming.
For further details on the court system and its associated costs, please see the section on ‘taking your trader to court’.
Top Tips
Make sure your trader has assets in their own name. You want to recover money, not collect CCJs or spend more money on debt recovery people.
Ensure your solicitor provides estimated legal costs for your case and make sure you see their T&C’s on billing.
You must follow the steps in ‘if it has gone wrong’ to comply with your own legal obligations.
Mediation
With small claims you are required to go through mediation before going to court.
If you are seeking more than £10,000 you may be offered mediation (the court will organise this) or you can chose private mediation.
https://www.gov.uk/respond-to-court-claim-for-money/mediation
Consider if you can claim your money back from your bank
If payment has been made via bank transfer which is now viewed to be the norm, it is important to know if your bank has queried uncharacteristic transactions.
If no contact has been made you, the account holder, could pursue a claim the bank has not followed the ‘banking protocol’ under the CRM (Consumer Reimbursement Model) Code.
The maximum that can be claimed from a bank is limited to £85k. If per chance payment was made via a credit card, the value of the transaction being no more than £30k, the credit card provider can be held jointly liable as per The Consumer Credit Act 1974 S.75
Consider registering your claim with your bank, if you feel that the bank has not done enough to protect you the consumer.
Resources
Once you have checked all these steps, please go to the section on ‘taking your trader to court’
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