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Has anyone else had incredibly bad experiences with these people or with McKenzie friends? surely they should all be under some regulations by law rather than voluntarily? given they are in court and advising people in court situations??
Ok so we went to a small organisation called Family Law Assistance run by someone called Steven & Michaela Wade, these are two of a kind to deal with although to be fair we haven't had much dealing with Steven, just Michaela. They advertise as family law in court and out of court support and we needed support with a family case we are dealing with. We agreed to pay them £655 although they asked for this prior to any work had been done at all, but we paid it in good faith. I then sent her the necessary paperwork, although the key documents were not available to me, the invoice stated that she would prepare a Position Statement and pursue the CAFCASS report (neither of which she did due to the cafcass report not being available at the point of cancellation.
We decided within a couple of days that we didn't have the relationship with Michaela that we wanted, she seemed excessively busy, and under the circumstances we wanted a schedule for when a meeting would take place (this was on the invoice also but never happened), after speaking to the secretary who said that a refund would be no problem and would be issued within one working day- given the work had clearly not been started - (this call was within 7 days of paying Family Law Assistance) - however!!! no refund was given and we then got an email to say that we would get 'any and all refunds within 30 days'. So we wrote back reminding them that this was a distance selling agreement and they had to refund within 14 days, which they did not reply to, and after much attempted communication on our side we said that we would be taking them to small claims court if they did not refund.
So today, at least one month following talking to these crooks, we receive a part refund of £490, because she said she 'read the paperwork', however, the question I have is that reading the paperwork was not part of the invoice, it was the above mentioned tasks that she had agreed to do - and we were told that she hadn't even started reading the papers we had sent when we cancelled the agreement. We know that the outstanding £170 is not really a great deal of money but we are outraged that these people are prepared to go to these lengths to take our money.
I should add that there were no cancellation notes or such like sent or that I can find on their website, and the payment had to be made by bank transfer, on the day the invoice was sent to me.
Is this a usual scenario when dealing with such McKenzie friends? I should add that we used a solicitor in the end.
Ok so we went to a small organisation called Family Law Assistance run by someone called Steven & Michaela Wade, these are two of a kind to deal with although to be fair we haven't had much dealing with Steven, just Michaela. They advertise as family law in court and out of court support and we needed support with a family case we are dealing with. We agreed to pay them £655 although they asked for this prior to any work had been done at all, but we paid it in good faith. I then sent her the necessary paperwork, although the key documents were not available to me, the invoice stated that she would prepare a Position Statement and pursue the CAFCASS report (neither of which she did due to the cafcass report not being available at the point of cancellation.
We decided within a couple of days that we didn't have the relationship with Michaela that we wanted, she seemed excessively busy, and under the circumstances we wanted a schedule for when a meeting would take place (this was on the invoice also but never happened), after speaking to the secretary who said that a refund would be no problem and would be issued within one working day- given the work had clearly not been started - (this call was within 7 days of paying Family Law Assistance) - however!!! no refund was given and we then got an email to say that we would get 'any and all refunds within 30 days'. So we wrote back reminding them that this was a distance selling agreement and they had to refund within 14 days, which they did not reply to, and after much attempted communication on our side we said that we would be taking them to small claims court if they did not refund.
So today, at least one month following talking to these crooks, we receive a part refund of £490, because she said she 'read the paperwork', however, the question I have is that reading the paperwork was not part of the invoice, it was the above mentioned tasks that she had agreed to do - and we were told that she hadn't even started reading the papers we had sent when we cancelled the agreement. We know that the outstanding £170 is not really a great deal of money but we are outraged that these people are prepared to go to these lengths to take our money.
I should add that there were no cancellation notes or such like sent or that I can find on their website, and the payment had to be made by bank transfer, on the day the invoice was sent to me.
Is this a usual scenario when dealing with such McKenzie friends? I should add that we used a solicitor in the end.
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