Terms of Business

DO I HAVE TO USE A CLAIMS MANAGEMENT COMPANY?

NO. You have the right to make the complaint yourself and use the Financial Ombudsman Service if necessary which is FREE. You also have the right to seek further advice from other legal firms or consumer organisations if you wish.

ARE THERE ANY RISKS INVOLVED IN MAKING A CLAIM?

We may charge you a fee if you cancel your claim or breach your agreed terms of business with us (Section 5). In cases of arrears, outstanding balances or where you are in a debt management plan, IVA or bankruptcy, your settlement may be used to offset arrears or reduce the balance that you owe. You may not receive any cash in hand but you will still need to pay our fees for the work that we have done. If you cannot pay, we may take legal action against you to recover our debt which will add further charges to the amount you owe. You must consider that your claim may not succeed – no claim is guaranteed. You must consider that escalation via the Financial Ombudsman Service, Financial Services Compensation Scheme or legal action is subject to processing times and procedures which cannot be quantified in advance.

WILL ANY FEES BE PAID TO OTHER PARTIES INVOLVED WITH MY CLAIM?

If your claim has been introduced to us by a third party, we may pay that introducer a referral fee. Details of third party payments will be provided at your request. You will never pay more than the amount shown in Section 4.

1. What we will do for you:

We will progress your claim on a “Success Fee” basis. This means that we will only charge you if redress is recovered based on an agreed percentage of the amount received (except if you cancel this agreement before any final outcome – see Section 5 on “Cancelling this Agreement”).

2.What we will NOT do for you:

We will NOT advise you to pursue a claim that in our opinion has no realistic chance of success, or where the redress amount does not, in our opinion, justify the likely work involved and we reserve the right to cancel this Agreement if we form this opinion at any stage of the claim.

3.What we expect from you:

• NOT TO DEAL DIRECTLY WITH ANY FIRM without our knowledge that is subject to our complaint. We will not be responsible for settlements below full entitlement when a client has negotiated or accepted an offer without our recommendation. If you are contacted by a firm or receive any correspondence, please inform us immediately so that we can take appropriate action on your behalf.
• To provide us with all relevant information in your possession which gives evidence of a fact in the claim(s) and not to ask us to work in an improper or unreasonable way or to mislead us.
• To provide us with exclusive authority to act against the firm subject to our complaint for the duration of the contract (to the exclusion even of you) unless you cancel your claim (see Section 5).

4.Our Fees

If we are not successful then you will have nothing to pay. The redress value is the total benefit awarded before the deduction of any income tax on added statutory interest (which is your own personal liability to HMRC). We will take all reasonable care to check the accuracy of an offer with the information available to us at the time. However, should your offer be increased at a later date, we reserve the right to charge our fees on the additional amount.

EXAMPLE FEES @ 33% + VAT

Please note that redress may be retained and offset by a firm to any amount owing if you are in Arrears. Redress may also be credited to some finance types. This means you may not receive any cash in hand but you will still owe our fee for the work that we have done. If our fees are not paid within 7 days of you receiving your redress, we will notify you that your account may be passed to a Debt Collection Agency. If your account has to be passed to a Debt Collection Agency, we reserve the right to add a 20% collection fee to your debt.

5. Cancelling this Agreement

1. We can cancel this agreement at any time if you breach your duties set out in paragraph 3. We reserve the right to charge a fee for any abortive costs in progressing your claim at the rates per hour of work completed shown below which we may deduct from any fee already paid.
2. Cancellation of this Agreement by either party must be in writing or via email (from your registered email address with us). Alternatively, download a Cancellation Form from our website at synergyfinancialsolutions.co.uk/cancel or Call Us to request a cancellation form is sent to you.
3. There is a 14 day cooling off period after you have signed these terms in which you may cancel the agreement without any charge.
4. If you cancel after the 14 day cooling off period we reserve the right to charge for our abortive costs at £200 per hour of work completed.

6.Complaints Procedure

In the event of any complaint with our service, please contact us by phone, email, post or fax at
Synergy Financial Solutions, Heritage Exchange, South Lane, Elland HX5 0HG. T. 01422 735045 F. 01422 735005 E. contact@synergyfs.co.uk

We will aim to issue a Prompt Written Acknowledgement within 5 working days of receiving your complaint. We will then investigate your complaint and issue a Final Response Letter within 8 weeks. If you are still unhappy you can then have the complaint independently assessed by the Claims Management Ombudsman who can investigate complaints up to six years from the date of the problem happening or within three years of when you found out about the problem. If you wish to use the Claims Management Ombudsman, this must be done within six months of our final response to your complaint. If you would like more information about the Claims Management Ombudsman the contact details are as follows:

Website: www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/claims-management-ombudsman | Telephone: 0800 023 4567