WARNING: Claims Consultants can be bad for your wealth. The Government finally in late 2005 woke up to the damage being done to innocent accident victims, who have been falling prey to unregulated, unqualified claims farmers, and in December 2006 at last made a start on regulation of such people. BEWARE! Official compulsory regulation of claims managers started in April 2007, when a criminal offence of operating without a licence came into force. Before then, for many years, innocent accident victims were fair game for the unscrupulous, unregulated and unqualified.

Who Are They?

Anyone can call themselves a Claims Consultant, Direct Injury Claims Expert, Personal injury Expert/Specialist, or some such other fancy sounding title. Ask them if they have any legal qualifications. Most have none.

Why bad for my Wealth?

A solicitor can charge your opponent for all or most of your legal fees. But a claims consultant can't. So they make their money by selling. Then they might get kick-backs from garages, car hire companies and others. And they might even get you to agree to pay them a percentage of YOUR compensation!

What Do They Do?

First of all, they make money by SELLING YOU to a solicitor who will buy your case. Ask them how much money they will make by selling your name and address to a solicitor who is willling to buy. They might get £300, £400, even £600 or more - JUST FOR GETTING YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS!

Often many do little more than get you to sign some forms, and in the worst cases YOU AGREE TO LET THE "claims consultant" keep a big chunk of YOUR money - sometimes 25%, 30%, 40% or more of YOUR compensation, however much you get. For example if you had a substantial claim of £10,000, you might lose £2,000 or more to the "consultant"!

Wow! Is this legal?

Solicitors can only charge you a fair price for any work they do, and have to tell you about their charges in advance. With Runhams, our aim is that YOU keep 100% of YOUR compensation. Solicitors have proper legal training, Professional Rules and Standards, and are fully insured and regulated. But unqualified "claims consultants" have up to now had no professional rules or regulations, so they could do what they liked - and often did! Just think, what happens if it all goes wrong?

Will I See A Solicitor?

If you use a claims "consultant", you may NEVER see a solicitor! They might sell your case to a solicitor whose business is in a different part of the country. Or one whose business model tries to avoid client contact as much as possible to keep costs down.

If someone calls at your door, ask if they are a qualified solicitor or legal executive. Ask if they are employed by solicitors. (Solicitors are BANNED from cold-calling on your doorstep). And they should NOT USE claims farmers who cold call. Ask what qualifications the person calling has to advise you about making a claim. Ask how much they get paid for signing you up. You may find that they have NO qualifications at all to tell you anything about claiming. The solicitors you get may be hundreds of miles away - do you want a service where you can't meet your solicitor, and everything is done by form-filling?

But they do a better job than solicitors don't they?

No, they mostly just SELL your papers on to solicitors who will pay the price. The consultants can't be paid for the work they do - unless they either take part of YOUR compensation, or get paid for referring your case to the solicitors they use! How could an unqualified "claims consultant" offer you a better deal? A solicitor has trained for years, is subject to very strict laws and rules of professional conduct, and carries huge insurance cover - by law.

Many consultants ask you to sign a form, and at the end, it often gets you to agree that all your compensation will be paid, NOT to YOU, but to some other person. Why do they do this? Usually, so that they can be sure to take their cut from YOUR money when the claim ends! So what's the difference - Solicitors charge a percentage Success Fee on "No Win No Fee" deals, don't they?

NO, NOT FROM YOU ! Success fees are calculated as a percentage of the basic COSTS, and NOT a percentage of your compensation. The Success Fee (and legal costs/disbursements insurance premiums) are RECOVERABLE FROM YOUR OPPONENT IF YOU WIN. So you would not end up paying the success fee, and YOU would keep YOUR compensation.

What don't claims consultants do?

Most don't take any cases that they think aren't certain winners. They don't advertise the fact that they may take a big slice of YOUR MONEY, at little or no risk because they won't touch a case where there is a risk of losing. They don't tell you that IF your case needs to go to Court, then they can't then claim their slice. So they have a vested interest to make sure that you settle at any cost - even if the offer is far too low. They don't say that they have no training, no legal qualifications, no insurance and many have had no Professional Standards or Regulations. They don't say that they are going to sell your case to the highest bidder.

Take a tip - if your use a qualified solicitor who specialises in accident claims, then you won't need to worry. We are professional people, regulated by the Law Society, and fully insured. The chap who knocks on your door, or works from a barrow in the street, is not. He just wants to make a quick buck by selling your name and address.

If you had a medical problem, would you confide in a chap who had no medical qualifications, but knocked on your door one night, asking if you had any medical problems? No of course not.

Would you entrust your health to the same chap who accosted you in town next to his wheelbarrow? We doubt it. So WHY ENTRUST YOUR CLAIM to such people?

Key Benefits of Using Runhams

• Keep 100% of your compensation
• Conditional Fees ("No Win, No Fee") arrangements are available, combined with Insurance Cover against your risk of losing your case
• Nothing to pay if you lose - insurance available if you don't have any
• No insurance premiums to pay up-front
• No credit agreements
• Rehabilitation - if required we can make arrangements for things such as physiotherapy and private treatment to aid your recovery

What Will I Receive?

We will be happy to provide you with an estimate of the amount of compensation you might receive as soon as we have spoken to you, so why not give us a call?

Call Us Now

For expert assistance with your personal injury claim call us on 01274 532233 now or complete our free online enquiry form and we will be in touch with you shortly.