When a consumer is unhappy with their vehicle and a resolution cannot be agreed upon, they will turn to the courts. This ends up with a claim form dropping through your door.
This form cannot be ignored. If you do not answer, you will end up with a County Court Judgment (CCJ) in default. If the CCJ is also ignored, you will end up with the bailiffs on your doorstep.
The absolute best course of action is to send any such claim form over to us as soon as it arrives. Delays are never helpful, and the sooner we get the claim form, the sooner we can get to work on your defence.
You may wish to make a settlement offer to your customer at this stage and we can help with that, but regardless, you only have 14 days to acknowledge the claim, so this must be completed ASAP either by yourselves or, ideally, by us. Once the claim is acknowledged, you then get an extra 14 days to file a defence.
In a recent case, we submitted a defence for a client in December 2023 which dealt with the facts and also highlighted to the court how poorly the claim form had been completed. This claim made it in front of a judge within four months, which is super quick. The hearing itself was even quicker, as the judge called in both parties and simply told the consumer they had no evidence to support their claim that there was a fault either present now or at the point of sale, and so, they should consider taking the goodwill gesture that our client had previously offered. The £2781 repair claim turned into a £200 gesture of goodwill.
A quick and tidy conclusion, but one which came about on the back of the detail and points we made in the defence and witness statement. We made the judge’s decision easy, and our client was the grateful beneficiary of that.
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