Cartel Client Review

[TUTTSI]

Re: Cartel Client Review

Does anyone have any knowledge of Credit Issues Limited? I have a freind using them who says theyre OK.

QCK

Has you friend been sucessfull and received any money back from this company? How long ago did they start dealing with her claims? It would be very interesting to have a good Claims MnagementCmpany for a change.

Have a read of this thread on MSE:-

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&sou...Wg2qXxEn2UG87A

and I have just oundthis one as well:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&sou...971Dl9qJeysGMg

[Amethyst]

Re: Cartel Client Review

LB will not recommend anyone uses a Claims Company. We will also not recommend anyone caught up with Cartel uses another company who offers a ''rescue'' package or similar. Anyone in difficulty through their use of any CMC or Solicitor should post their issues and ask for help. Don't jump out the frying pan into the fire.

We don't want any ''my mates cats sisters goldfish used them and they were fab'' type posts on here.

[QCKate]

Re: Cartel Client Review

LB will not recommend anyone uses a Claims Company. We will also not recommend anyone caught up with Cartel uses another company who offers a ''rescue'' package or similar. Anyone in difficulty through their use of any CMC or Solicitor should post their issues and ask for help. Don't jump out the frying pan into the fire.

We don't want any ''my mates cats sisters goldfish used them and they were fab'' type posts on here.

sOrry that wasn't my intention. I wanted to warn my mates sisters goldfish if anyone was aware of any problems. Sorry!

QCK
:tinysmile_cry_t:

[Amethyst]

Re: Cartel Client Review

S'ok am sensitive about these things, no offence meant. I wouldnt use them - look them up on companies house and look the directors up on the Law Society site etc, google them and do the research - that should give you a good idea whether ANY company is worth using or not.

I tend to think no accounts, dormant companies and constant changes of directorship and address, and numerous complaints on forums and blogs, shout a big fat ''stear clear'' out.

[orc]

Re: Cartel Client Review

FYI From the Daily Mirror 18 March 2010

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigat...cant-affo.html

"Thousands of cash-strapped, vulnerable people entrusted £20million to this man who said he could write off their debts.
Cartel Client Review took up to £495 in upfront fees from people desperate to reclaim bank and mortgage charges and dump credit card debts.
It promised the fee would be refunded that if there was no valid claim - but yesterday boss Carl Wright (pictured left) admitted to us there's no money for refunds.
Some customers could face legal bills running to £30,000 after Cartel's solicitors failed to insure themselves against losing claims, and were shut down last week on suspicion of dishonesty.
Now the Ministry of Justice is investigating Cartel.
Not good.
Carl Wright styles himself as the man who saw the credit crunch coming. He also saw how to make a huge pile of money out of it.

As his firm gloated last year, the recession "continues to assist the spectacular growth of the financial irregularity market".
But we've been investigating complaints from customers who say they've been kept in the dark by Cartel for months.
Rosemary Duffin, from Dolgellau, North Wales, paid £495 to see if her mortgage was mis-sold.
She was told to expect a result in a year but after hearing nothing, she needed her money back. So she asked us to help.
We clinched her refund and Rosemary said: "I don't know when I would have seen my money if you hadn't intervened."
But others were told they'd have to wait to hear from Cartel's legal team at Consumer Credit Litigation Solicitors - the firm shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority last week.
CCLS ran out of money and staff were unpaid for months.
Cartel, meanwhile, should be swimming in cash. Wright paid himself £790,000 in 2008, shortly before spending £735,000 cash on a huge gaff in Warrington. Yet accounts for 2008 show it was more than £560,000 in the red. So is clients' money safe?
"It depends which way you want to say safe," squirmed Wright. "The money is not available to be refunded back."
He insisted the initial legal work had been done as promised and clients now needed to find a no-win, no-fee solicitor to take the case to court.
That could be tricky, he admitted, especially as recent judgments have made many of Cartel's claims "questionable". Wright said he was "gobsmacked" to find CCLS - which shared his office building - was uninsured.
He doesn't know how many of his 35,000 clients are due a refund but, after investing £1m himself, has made sure he's first in line for payouts if Cartel goes bust.
Shamelessly, he said customers should be able to reclaim their fees from their credit card company."

------------------------------- merged -------------------------------

LB will not recommend anyone uses a Claims Company. We will also not recommend anyone caught up with Cartel uses another company who offers a ''rescue'' package or similar. Anyone in difficulty through their use of any CMC or Solicitor should post their issues and ask for help. Don't jump out the frying pan into the fire.

We don't want any ''my mates cats sisters goldfish used them and they were fab'' type posts on here.

Yes exactly.

Other firms have been set up for Carl Wright to "parachute" into.

[Amethyst]

Re: Cartel Client Review

Grassroots Financial Ltd - Legal Beagles Consumer Forum

[LJMcLaw]

Re: Cartel Client Review

Carl Wright: the interview

By Nick Sommerlad on March 18, 2010 11:37 AM in Debts and loans

As a follow-up to our story on Cartel Client Review, I think it is worth running some of the quotes from yesterday's interview with boss Carl Wright in full.
While he's keen to keep it upbeat, it's clearly grim news for many of his clients.


To kick off I asked Wright to give his version of what happened to Consumer Credit Litigation Solicitors, effectively Cartel's in-house solicitors.
We've been told by the Solicitors Regulation Authority that CCLS were shut down last Wednesday due to "suspected dishonesty" and alleged "breaches of the solicitor's code of conduct".
Wright told me:

It's really simple. Cartel had provided practice funding for disbursement litigation for approximately two years and the ability for Cartel to continue to do that reduced.
External funders were being brought on board and, unfortunately, what happened with CCLS is it got to a point where it had a cashflow problem. It couldn't pay the salaries.
On the day it couldn't pay the salaries, the SRA came in to see them the same day and basically explained that if they hadn't resolved that problem within a certain period of time, which was effectively four weeks, they would intervene.
It was pretty much, from what we understand, a cashflow problem within the business which, in some respects, was precipitated equally by the length of time it was taking for them to complete on cases.
I think that was possibly directly caused by the tactics the bank used to drag it out, a bit like they did with the bank charges scenario. They have just been pushing and pushing and pushing.
There are a number of different factors but the bottom line is they couldn't continue along the route that they were going down without any external third party funding.

Under the code of conduct, solicitors are meant to keen a healthy distance from their introducers and not become reliant on just the one.
The SRA tells us they intervened to "protect the interests of clients" and we understand there were fears that CCLS couldn't do that when they depended so heavily on business from Cartel.
Not only were they based in the same Manchester office building, but were at one point on the same floor. Wright admitted some former Cartel staff had taken jobs at CCLS but said he wasn't aware of any sharing of staff.
He said:

The SRA had visited and met with the principals of CCLS on several occasions during 2009. There were a number of points raised.
The reliance on business from Cartel was one of the points raised and CCLS had effectively explained to the SRA what they were going to do to rectify that.
It is absolutely true that CCLS and the growth of CCLS was reliant in its earlier stages on its business from Cartel. They had got plans to expand that to other introducers.
The SRA were aware of that and I have got to conclude that if the SRA had a problem with that during 2009 they would have done something about it then.
I personally can't believe that had anything to do with their action on February 10 and March 10, because that was purely down to the fact that staff weren't paid wages.

When was Wright aware that CCLS hadn't taken out indemnity insurance covering the Cartel cases it to the High Court last November?

At the 11th second of the 11th minute of the 11th hour.
There was a conference with the barristers, several meetings over three days leading up to November 13 and it was during that time that it became evident that the ATE cover ("after-the-event insurance") for those particular cases wasn't in place.
Gobsmacked was the expression I would give. When an introducer passes a case to a solicitor, if there's a requirement for ATE insurance, it is normally put in place. My understanding was always that would be in place.
When it got to that point, the people running the cases needed to decide whether to proceed with those cases or not. What was sought at that time was the advice of the barristers of the merits of the case, ie whether they were going to win or not.
On the back of that, it was decided that it was in the best interest to proceed because the costs had already been racked up in the previous months.
It was the right thing, in my opinion, to proceed at that point.
And also I think it is important to note that in the majority of those cases the costs, if everything had been done in the right way, would have been awarded against the banks due to their conduct of the cases.
Unfortunately for CCLS, when staff weren't paid, staff weren't able to work on the cases in the proceeding weeks to it being closed down, therefore those cases weren't dealt with in an appropriate way and the banks effectively would win their costs which wouldn't have been the case if it had been run correctly.

I asked Wright to comment on reports that Cartel had taken £30 million from clients and he said it was more like £20 million. So how safe was that money, given that many clients could be owed their money back?

Depends which way you want to say 'safe'. The money is not available to be able to be refunded back to the clients.
If you then say 'safe', the service that it paid for, that initial fee, that part of the service has been done. It has been completed. So that part of the service has been done.
What they need is for a firm of solicitors to conclude the actual litigation in the case.
So I don't know which way you would put this. It's a bit like saying you go to a bowling alley, you've paid for a pair of shoes and now you want to pay for the bowling game. Well that's a different part of the transaction.
The two parts of this transaction are preparing a case for a claim, which is what a claims management company would do, for which we have some upfront fees, and then there is a claim being handled by a solicitor which is normally done on a no-win no-fee and they take their costs at the back end.
So the reports that clients have lost money, I would wholeheartedly dispute that.
Secondly, if any client had a complaint in that respect and they paid that fee by credit card the Ministry of Justice has already made it clear that they can look to claim that money back.
The solicitors who have taken the cases over have written to the clients to say you can have your file back and pass it to another firm of solicitors.
So the sensationalist angle of 'they have lost their money and this is a big big problem' is totally 100 per cent disputable.

So what happens now if clients don't have a claim and are owed a refund?

If the new solicitor didn't have the expertise to determine that there is a claim there, I would say, first of all, that client would need to have that case reviewed by an alternative firm of solicitors.
It is a specialist area and, unfortunately, the volume and number of solicitors in the UK who are capable are few and far between.
And I have to accept that that is, in itself, a problem because, with the volume of clients that we are talking about, the number of solicitors that are capable and able to do that are too few.
What has actually happened in the last few months is there have been a number of court cases which have determined what can and can't be done.
I would have to say that there is an element from those cases that make some of the cases that we accepted questionable.
Is it possible that any of the cases where the clients paid a fee at the front end that they would be in the future entitled to a refund under our terms and conditions?
The answer to that would be yes and I would expect that there would be some cases in that respect.
Genuinely I would not know how many. I would not expect that to be a massive number.

So what money does Cartel have money to pay those refunds? The 2008 accounts showed liabilities exceeding assets by £560,000.

It was a healthier position at September 2009 but during the last six months that has become a less healthier position.

As things stand, do your liabilities still exceed your assets?

I would have to say yes to that question.

So, unless things change, it is not looking good.

I wouldn't want to alarm people at this stage unnecessarily, which is why I wouldn't mind doing a follow-up if you needed to.

The sum up:
Wright says clients have had had the preparatory work done by CCLS as promised. The original deal was for a refund for anyone without a case. That's currently looking unlikely and he suggests those who paid by credit card seek a refund from their credit card company. This is also the advice of the SRA. Under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, the creditor (ie credit card company) is "jointly and severally liable" for misrepresentation or breach of contract by the supplier.
It appears that Cartel are looking to find new solicitors to take the the strong cases to court on a no-win no-fee basis. The original deal was for fees of up to 30 per cent to come out of any winnings. It remains to be seen if Cartel can honour those terms. Wright says that clients are free to find their own solicitors if they wish. Again, the SRA has guidance on how.
Finally, he admits that the High Court ruling in December makes some of Cartel's credit card cases look "questionable". Initially Cartel spun this as good news. But it only put off the bad. Banks won the right to "reconstitute" an accurate copy of the original credit agreement, rather than having to find the actual original signed agreement. Most should be able to and it then comes down to whether they are fair. With some very old agreements, where perhaps the credit card company has been bought and sold a few times since, this could be harder. Until they do they "reconstitute the agreement, it become "redeemably" - ie temporarily- unenforceable. Not written off.
Wright says he doesn't know how many Cartel cases are bad and so how much his firm might owe. But he admits the firm owes more than it is owed and that the first million pounds is owed to him personally, under the terms of a debenture taken out last August.
We'll pass on more news as and when we get it.

[orc]

Re: Cartel Client Review

The cartel web site appears to be down... Still no word on MoJ news page.



Correction It is now back on line but access for reps only- no public info.




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

[Dexter]

Re: Cartel Client Review

Atlast! The MOJ do something

CARTEL CLIENT REVIEW LTD

Due to the high volume of enquiries we have received about the status of Cartel Client Review Ltd’s (CCR) authorisation with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) we are making the following statement which responds and provides advice to assist customers of CCR.

The MoJ regulates claims management companies by enforcing the Compensation Act 2006 and underlying legislation. Enforcement action is taken against businesses which fail to comply with the conduct rules. A range of informal and formal actions are available including warnings, undertakings and ultimately the suspension or cancellation of a business’s authorisation to trade in claims services. Removing a business’s authorisation is a serious matter which can only be taken after careful consideration of all the evidence and the consequences for clients of such action.

MoJ has already confirmed publicly that we have been investigating CCR. As a result of this investigation, we have suspended the authorisation of Cartel Client Review Ltd, with effect from today 18 March 2010.

This means that CCR will no longer be able to carry out any claims management services. As with any suspended business, the MoJ will be monitoring the situation and considering next steps that may be appropriate.

If you are a customer of CCR your agreement with them, as with any provider, is a private contractual matter between yourself and the provider in which MoJ cannot intervene directly because it is not a regulatory matter for which MoJ has responsibility. Further information which might assist consumers can be found here.

Consumer Credit Litigation Solicitors provided legal services for clients of CCR but were recently closed down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA have an information page about that closure on their website.

[Yoda]

Re: Cartel Client Review

Atlast! The MOJ do something

CARTEL CLIENT REVIEW LTD

Due to the high volume of enquiries we have received about the status of Cartel Client Review Ltd’s (CCR) authorisation with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) we are making the following statement which responds and provides advice to assist customers of CCR.

The MoJ regulates claims management companies by enforcing the Compensation Act 2006 and underlying legislation. Enforcement action is taken against businesses which fail to comply with the conduct rules. A range of informal and formal actions are available including warnings, undertakings and ultimately the suspension or cancellation of a business’s authorisation to trade in claims services. Removing a business’s authorisation is a serious matter which can only be taken after careful consideration of all the evidence and the consequences for clients of such action.

MoJ has already confirmed publicly that we have been investigating CCR. As a result of this investigation, we have suspended the authorisation of Cartel Client Review Ltd, with effect from today 18 March 2010.

This means that CCR will no longer be able to carry out any claims management services. As with any suspended business, the MoJ will be monitoring the situation and considering next steps that may be appropriate.

If you are a customer of CCR your agreement with them, as with any provider, is a private contractual matter between yourself and the provider in which MoJ cannot intervene directly because it is not a regulatory matter for which MoJ has responsibility. Further information which might assist consumers can be found here.

Consumer Credit Litigation Solicitors provided legal services for clients of CCR but were recently closed down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA have an information page about that closure on their website.

And it only took the Ministry of Jokers 5,000 complaints and 2 yrs to do this. What a sham. And they go and give him another authorisation for Grass Roots to carry on with his little operation. The MOJ should be brought to justice

[Amethyst]

Re: Cartel Client Review

And it only took the Ministry of Jokers 5,000 complaints and 2 yrs to do this. What a sham. And they go and give him another authorisation for Grass Roots to carry on with his little operation. The MOJ should be brought to justice

Completely agree, its an absolute disgrace how they have allowed this to happen.

They are also continuing to allow it to happen with other companies who have similar set ups.

[Amethyst]

Re: Cartel Client Review

Cartel Claims Ltd Greater Manchester Personal Injury, Employm... Authorised Business 19/11/2009

Cartel Client Review Ltd Greater Manchester Financial products/servi... Authorisation Suspended 18/03/2010

Cartel Group Holdings Pl... Greater Manchester Financial products/servi... Authorised Business 22/02/2008

Grass Roots (Financial) ... Greater Manchester Personal Injury, Financi... Authorised Business 22/05/2009

[LJMcLaw]

Re: Cartel Client Review

Cartel Have been suspended by the MoJ

[orc]

Re: Cartel Client Review

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8574956.stm


Cartel Client Review closed down by Ministry of Justice


Carl Wright is Cartel's managing director

One of the biggest claims management companies, Cartel Client Review, has been shut down by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). The MoJ has been investigating Cartel since February after complaints from customers that they were owed money.
Last week, Cartel's associated firm of solicitors, CCLS, was shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
Cartel is thought to have taken about £20m from up to 70,000 customers over the past two years.


Plus

http://www.crainsmanchesterbusiness....100319830/1031


3:25 pm, March 18, 2010
MoJ suspends Cartel Client Review's licence

By Michael Fahy

The Ministry of Justice has suspended the licence of Cartel Client Review, the controversial financial claims management firm based in Manchester.

The regulator said that the suspension meant that Cartel Client Review would no longer be able to carry out any claims management services.

“As with any suspended business, the MoJ will be monitoring the situation and considering next steps that may be appropriate,” the regulator said in a statement. It has set up a section on its website to provide advice to thousands of customers who have paid up to £495 to have claims assessed.

[Amethyst]

Re: Cartel Client Review

It has set up a section on its website to provide advice to thousands of customers who have paid up to £495 to have claims assessed.

who have ?