Dear LPG, 

This is the second part of a story I started to tell in my last message (►►►), but it is more of an explanation of the moral than anything else.

Let me take you back to my friend and her Tax rebate…

I suppose you might say that she did get some of her money back because she eventually received £344.91, which appeared optimistic until you saw the details. The amount that HMRC owed her was £683.28, which means that the actual fee was £318.37;  that is 47.99% of the money she was entitled to.  

There are a couple of other questions to ask. When she finally got through to them, the solicitors told her they had posted a cheque but that they had prepared and then spoiled it somehow. They said that she would not be able to cash it. My first question has to be: How could such a professional company that deals with Tax rebates all the time make such a mistake? Secondly, they told her they had already posted the cheque, so why did my friend never receive the badly completed one? We all know you cannot retrieve a letter from the Royal Mail once it has been posted.

Please know that you don't have to go online if you think you are owed a tax rebate; all you need to do is find your National Insurance Number and phone His Majesty's Revenue and Customs office (the tax office) yourself and, if you do nothing, the tax office will eventually send you a letter telling you about any rebate you are entitled to.

If you want to know, their telephone number is 0300 200 3300, and it took me half the time it took my friend to get through to the solicitors, to get through to them when I phoned to ask a few questions.  

Effectively, she has given away half her tax rebate to these people in payment for a phone call that she could have made herself. All she needed was her National Insurance Number (and she had to find that and give it to the solicitors before they could do anything in the first place).

The advert got her thinking, but the thought of having to go online persuaded her to let the solicitors help (?) and lose half the money she was owed.  

This is the reality of 'NO WIN, NO FEE'.  

KT, Beckenham

Just in case the internet version of the rules does not baffle you KT has found a link or two…

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