Motor Finance Terms

Consumer Refund Service Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority FRN 833275.

Consumer Refund Service Ltd are a Financial Dispute Resolution Specialist and will handle your complaint about your Lender for the potential mis-selling of your motor finance agreement.

Your complaint will be submitted to your Lender in accordance with their complaint process. If unsuccessful we will (if appropriate) refer your case to the Financial Ombudsman Service for adjudication. We will not use the Court Service and will not risk costing you any money other than our Charges detailed below.

Once you sign agreeing to our Terms of Engagement, we will send your complaint to your Lender. After this you need to:

• Ensure you have provided us with all relevant information and documents you have about your agreement(s).
• Tell us if your contact details change
• Tell us if the Lender contacts you directly
• Return to us any additional information that we need from you
• Allow us to deduct our fee before forwarding the balance to you
• Satisfy our fees within 14 days if payment is sent directly to you by the Lender
• Consumer Refund Service Ltd will deal with all other matters.

The charges for our service are

Consumer Refund Service Ltd offer a “No Win, No Fee” Service and charge no upfront fees. This means that if you do not benefit financially from our services, we will not charge you for the services you receive from us.

Consumer Refund Service Ltd will charge a fee plus VAT of any redress that you receive. (Redress includes any compensation, reduction of an existing debt; or any other form of redress). Our fee is based upon the value of the redress that is offered in line with the following table;

• Our fees are subject to Regulatory Change and will be charged at the prevailing maximum rate.
• Please note that your Lender may uphold other mis-sold finance agreements that you may have as a result of our approach to them. If this is the case, we will deal with these cases on your behalf and we will charge a fee plus VAT for this in line with the table above. Should additional claim(s) become apparent during the claims process then we will notify you of this and should you opt for us to continue to assist you with the additional claim(s) then we will act on each claim singularly and any redress payable will be actioned on a single ‘case by case’ basis for the purpose of calculating our fee (ie. not on a cumulative basis).
• If you owe us charges for any other complaint that we have pursued on your behalf we reserve the right to offset any redress you receive against your debt to us.
• You accept that we can refer overdue payments to third parties (for example, a debt collection agency). You accept that you will be liable for, and indemnify us for, all additional costs or charges incurred by the third party or us in pursuing the collection of the overdue payment. These costs include recovery agent costs, repossession costs, location search costs, process server costs, debt collection commission and legal fees on an indemnity basis.

Fee Examples

If the redress we obtain for you is;

• £1,000 – then the fee payable by you to us would be £360 (inclusive of VAT where applicable)
• £3,000 – then the fee payable by you to us would be £1008 (inclusive of VAT where applicable)
• £10,000 – then the fee payable by you to us would be £3000 (inclusive of VAT where applicable)

Note that the above illustrations are not to be taken as an estimate of the amount likely to be recovered for you.  The amount you will have to pay may be more or less than the illustrations.

If your offer of compensation is used entirely by you lender to reduce your outstanding credit agreement balance, we shall charge a flat fee of £240 if the compensation offered is more than £1000.00.
Our flat fee is payable by 12 standing order instalments of £20 per calendar month. The first instalment being due no later than 30 days after the date of invoice and subsequent payments monthly thereafter. Should the aforementioned schedule of payments be breached, we reserve the right to revise our invoice and calculate our fees as if all compensation was payable “cash in hand” (24% of any financial benefit)

If your offer of compensation is used entirely by you lender to reduce your outstanding credit agreement balance, we shall waive our fee if the compensation offered is less than £1000.00.

Terminating this Agreement:

You are entitled to cancel this agreement at any point within 14 days of signing it and incur no charge. In addition, even after the 14 day cooling off period, you are entitled to cancel this agreement at any point and will incur no charge unless your Lender has offered redress. If you cancel after your Lender has offered a financial benefit our charges remain as set out above.

Data & Confidentiality:

All of your data is controlled and processed in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation and will be used to help us pursue your complaint. Your files are kept for 6 years and will be returned to you upon request.
Consumer Refund Service Ltd will only use your data as outlined in our privacy policy which can be viewed online at consumer-refund.org/privacy

Options:

Before finalising this agreement, it is important that we advise you that you can make the complaint to the Lender yourself. All Lenders have a complaints procedure they must follow and the Financial Ombudsman Service offer a free adjudication service.

Complaints Procedure:

1. We aim to provide an excellent customer service at all times. However, if you are at all dissatisfied with the service that you receive, complaints may be made in writing, by e-mail, by telephone or in any other form in respect of a claims management service that we have provided and that is regulated under the Compensation Act 2006. Please write to Customer Complaints, Consumer Refund Service Ltd, 10-16 Bridge Street, Morpeth, NE61 1NJ or email [email protected] or telephone 01661 678007

2. We will send you a written or electronic acknowledgement of a complaint within five business days of receipt, identifying the person who will be handling the complaint for the business. Wherever possible, that person will not have been directly involved in the matter which is the subject of the complaint, and will have authority to settle the complaint.

3. Within four weeks of receiving a complaint, we will send you either:
a) a final response adequately addressing the complaint; or
b) a holding response, which explains why we are not yet in a position to resolve the complaint and indicates when we will make further contact.

4. Within eight weeks of receiving a complaint we will send you either:
a) a final response adequately addressing the complaint; or
b) a response which:
i) explains why we are still not in a position to make a final response, giving reasons for the further delay and indicating when we expect to be able to provide a final response; and
ii) informs you that you may refer the handling of the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you are dissatisfied with the delay.

5. Where we decide that redress is appropriate, we will provide you with fair compensation for any acts or omissions for which we are responsible and will comply with any offer of redress that you accept. Appropriate redress will not always involve financial redress, but could involve an apology or another suitable form of redress.

6. Should you remain dissatisfied with the service you have received, you may escalate your complaint within six months of our final response to your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service by phone on 0800 023 4567; or by post to Financial Ombudsman Service, Exchange Tower, Harbour Exchange, London, E14 9SR; or at https://cmc.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/cmcs/complaints-deal

We do not consent for the Financial Ombudsman to review your complaint after the six months have passed and so they will only be able to do so in very limited circumstances.