So, I was right to be cynical of ADR.
They clearly have not read the correspondence as their long explanation makes a number of statements that are just wrong, in my opinion.
However, they have stated that we are not in breach of contract - that should be a win for us. They also state that even though the claimant says he has losses, that as we are not in breach it is not appropriate to award compensation for such losses.
However, they have stated we have to waive charges for ongoing services, even though there has been no dispute of these from the claimant to us and the claimant had not asked for services to be stopped at any point.
And then, on top of that, they want us to make a good will award of £500.
This is plainly outside of the agreed contract terms. There is no law requiring us to pay anything if we did not breach contract terms. There is no law requiring a good will payment. So how the hell can they award this?
This means us being out of pocket by over £1500 - even though we did not breach our contract terms and the ombudsman service agree that point.
How can that be valid?
I think we have to fight this in court now.
Apart from all sorts of issues with this process - the few paragraphs we were sent when the claim was started is that the customer would be happy with a resolution that simply meant being released from contract without penalty. As we have already done this, we said that we agreed with their proposed resolution. In light of that we cannot see why they even took the claim on in the first place.
i.e. we had already resolved the dispute, already issued some good will credit (over £200), and already ceased the contract with no penalty. Yet, they take the claim costing us £335, and then decide we have to write off £700 owing and pay a further £500. Clearly this who system is some sort of scam, in my opinion.
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So where does this go next? Do you sue the ADR people, or the customer, or both?
ReplyDeleteJust curious, as it sounds like ADR is a con for the provider, and I was under the impression that not only is it compulsory, but that you are bound by their result, and can't take it to court.
I have no idea - it is a "decision" at this stage not a "final decision" and I have sent a load of responses now.
ReplyDeleteThey claim to have to consider the law and contract terms in making the decision. This decision clearly does not consider that, and so IMHO is simply not valid.
Basically they say we had a shortfall in the quality of services we provided and that as such we should waive £700 of charges and pay £500 good will. That is crazy - what is the point of a business to business contractual agreement if they can simply ignore it and make us liable to pay money!
Erm, I know its a bit late in the day, but how many employees does the customer have? Businesses with more than 10 aren't entitled to use the ADR scheme
ReplyDeleteHow do we find out?
ReplyDeleteNow I'm really interested in seeing the ruling.
ReplyDeletePls post it!!
So what happens if you refuse to pay the £500 and still persue the £700? What sanctions can be taken against you and on what grounds?
ReplyDeleteI have asked what happens if we do not comply.
ReplyDeleteCan you please post the ADR finding in full so we can all see it?
ReplyDeleteYou could probably find out by doing a bit of social engineering, or just paying a PI to sit outside their offices and count people in/out for a day or two. Assuming this proved they had more than 10 employees, you could probably reasonably add the costs to your court claim.
ReplyDeleteYou could probably find out by doing a bit of social engineering, or just paying a PI to sit outside their offices and count people in/out for a day or two. Assuming this proved they had more than 10 employees, you could probably reasonably add the costs to your court claim.
ReplyDelete