Agent charging for unsubstantiated costs - Possible Fraud

Darren007 · 20th November 2008, 22:05

My wife had to use a firm of London publicists for work last year.

Apart from a monthly fee, they advised that they charged disbursments. I understand this to mean 3rd party costs like couriers etc.

The company was billing my wife £300 on average per month for items like phones, entertainment wtc. etc. However, they refused to substabiate these alleged costs with receipts, vouchers or invoices. When challenged they advised that they had no problems in providing copies, then they changed their story that they are not obliged to provide us proof of expenditure.

My wife stopped paying any money and terminated the agreement. We have advised that we have no problem in paying for costs legitimately spent but we need these substantiated.

Just received a 2nd Letter before Action from Solicitors claiming £7000 from us. We have a papewr trail of some 30 odd letters to the Publicists asking for proof of costs and that we want to resolve this matter over the last year.

I have written back to the Solicitors (1st ones were told the same thing and now Publicists have appointed new ones) that their client must provide proof of expenditure and if they issue proceedings we will ask the court to set aside any proceedings until they provide us with the information we require.

Solicitors have sent a breakdown (without receipts) but we are seeing charges like diaries for publicists not dealing with us, letterheads, company logo, email, etc. The amounts on these invoices do not tally with what they claimed earlier and I am suspecting fraud.

Any advise would be appreciated.

raydetinu · 21st November 2008, 10:19

They must provide the information you require with the detailed receipts of any expenditure related to your account and time sheets or otherwise of time spent that would extra to your agreed net fee. Without these they have no case.

MARTIN3030 · 21st November 2008, 10:35

Was there a contract or agreement in place here ?

Under pre action protocols (Practice directions) They are obliged to provide you with all you request to enable you to properly be able to defend any action.
Had there been dispute from you before they instructed Solicitors ?
Have you got anything in writing ?

Try this;

Their address

date ****NOTICE UNDER CIVIL PROCEDURE RULES***

reference

Dear Sir/Madam,

This is in acknowledgement of your letter dated ................and also of .............The contents of which have been duly noted.
Further to you stressing that County Court proceedings will be actioned by yourselves, should I fail to make contact/stressing that proceedings are about to be commenced, in regard to alleged sums outstanding, and alleged owed by me on the above account,I remind you of Civil procedure rules protocols.(Pre action Practice directions)

I put forward that you now have a requirement to provide me with;

1) A true copy of the the signed contract/agreement between your client and myself which are to include terms and conditions.

2) All records you hold on me relevant to this case, including but not limited to

1. A transcript of all transactions, including charges, fees, interest, payments.
copies of receipts relating to products/goods/services which form any or part of any outstanding balances/amounts already paid in full.
2. Transcriptions of all telephone conversations recorded and any notes made in relation to telephone conversations
3. Where there has been any event in the account history over this period that has required manual intervention by any person, disclosure of any indication or notes that have either caused or resulted in that manual intervention, or other evidence of that manual intervention in relation to the account held by me.
4. True copies of any notice of assignment and/or default notice or enforcement notice that you sent to me, with a copy of any proof of postage that you hold.
5. Documents relating to any insurance added to the account, including the insurance contract and terms and conditions, date it was added and deleted (if applicable).
6. Details of any collection charge added to the account; specifically, the date it was levied, the amount of the charge, a detailed financial breakdown of how the charge was calculated, and what the charge covers.
7. Specific details of the fees/charges levied by any other agency in respect of this account and a detailed breakdown of said fees/charges and what each charge relates to and on what date said fees/charges were levied.
8. A genuine copy of any notice of fair use of my data as required by the Data Protection Act 1998.
9. A list of third party agencies to whom you have disclosed my personal data and a summary of the nature of the information you have disclosed.
10. Copies of statements for the entire duration of the contract/agreement.

I make this request to ensure that each party has equal footings which can allow action to proceed speedily fairly and without undue costs or waste of courts time,as defined within Pre-action Practice Directions -Protocols 4.6 of the Civil Procedures Rules.
I will give you 14 days to respond with the above,failure to comply will result in a complaint being made to the Court should action be escalated.Furthermore, to the FOS for any breaches of OFT and CCA codes.This includes breaches as a result of initiating a Country Court claim where failing to provide or produce documents make litigation improper..
Specifically this relates to one or any number of the following;

* demand any payment on the account, nor am I obliged to offer any payment to you.
* add any further interest or charges to the account.
* pass/sell the account or outstanding balance to any third party.
* register any information in respect of the account with any of the credit reference agencies.
* issue a default notice related to the account.

Furthermore,I reserve my right to make a copy of this letter available for inspection to the Court and Financial/Consumer regulators should you fail to comply with this request.

Should this matter be litigated in the Courts,then I will be asking for the case to be heard in my local Court,on the basis that I am an individual litigant in person with limited funds,facing a well sourced organisation.
This is my right under Civil procedure rules.
I await your response,and should you need further clarification on any of the above points,then I suggest that you direct them to your legal department.

Yours Faithfully/Sincerely

......................... .

Dated..........

Add or ammend anything you feel does not apply.

Keep a copy and send recorded.

Darren007 · 21st November 2008, 21:31

This is a copy of a letter my wife sent the Publicists Solicitors and I am typying up the terms of business in a seperate post.

BY FAX
& CERTIFIED MAIL

Solicitors LLP
Surrey

Dear Madam

XYZ PUBLICISTS (“your client”)

Thank you for your letter dated 18 November 2008 received this morning.

I have never disputed any legitimate expense incurred on my behalf but your client has repeatedly failed to provide evidence (receipts or invoices) of these alleged expenses, dating back to March 2007, despite assurance that they have no issue in doing so.

In July 2008, your Client instructed Messrs GG LLP threatening legal action against me. I contacted GG LLP and again asked that your Client provide copies of invoices or receipts repeatedly requested by me. GG LLP advised that your Client had failed to provide the information to them.

If your Client is unable to provide the information that we require, then we have no option but to allow this matter to proceed to Court. The breakdown that you have provided with your letter does not tally with the breakdown your Client provided earlier. For the sake of transparency, I require the following:-

(i) a detailed schedule of expenses with relevant supporting receipts or invoices for each month and each item dating back to March 2007;
(ii) an explanation what the charge relates to and why the expense was incurred;
(iii) clarification of the basis upon which your Client charges expenses under their terms of business;
(iv) copy of your Clients terms of business.

Should you proceed with Court action without providing me with the above, I will ask the Court to set aside any proceedings until the above request has been complied with. As this claim exceeds £5000, I shall be instructing a Solicitor to deal with this matter and will seek to recover my legal costs in dealing with this matter.

I look forward to receiving the above within 7 days from date of this letter.

Yours faithfully

Darren007 · 21st November 2008, 21:45

Copy of the "contract and terms of business" below from Publicists issued in February 2007.

Dear xxxxx

Further to out discussion please find below the revised fee structure for the next seven months.

XYZ Publicists will charge the following; March at £1,500, April, May and June at £2,000 a month, July and August at £1,500 and September at £2,000.

As in the previous letter our international fees start at £2,000 per month, and the revised fee of £1,500 for July and August normally applies when the agency is employed to focus solely on UK activity. XYZ Publicists for this revised fee will oversee activity undertaken for the European market dates, however if the volume of work proves to be substantial, XYZ Publicists may need to readdress the situation for the months of July and August.

All disbursements such as phone, fax, email, cuts, travel, bikes, etc are billed to our clients but we do ensure these are kept to a minimum.

Towards the end of summer we can look at the level you would like XYZ Publicists retained at from October onwards, and whether there are further territories that BBB will be released in, as well as other projects you may have coming out. When we are not actively working on a forthcoming projects, a monthly “hiatus” fee of £600 is charged whilst our clients’ remain on our books. This covers the administering of requests for the clients from press, PR’s plus continuing to place generic articles in British or International round-up pieces.

Once again we are looking forward to working with you.

Kindest Regards

XYZ publicists

I understand and accept the terms and conditions as set out in this letter of appointment.

Signature Date

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