Before I go any further let me make it clear that I am not an expert. This is the first time that I have taken anyone to court. My clients are generally very happy with my work and I have never before had such a problem to get paid. What I am giving you is my experience with the system when using it to try and get my money out of ICFBA Holdings Ltd.
The first place you have to go is Money Claim Online This is the Online service for the HM Courts. The main website contains lots of useful information and is the source for all of the Civil Procedure Rules. These CPRs as they are known are how civil cases are managed. If you are thinking of taking someone to Court these are what you need to read. You also need to read the Practice Directions attached to each CPR as these give further instructions or interpretations of the CPRs. As it turned out, the ICFBA hadn't bothered to read them and made a couple of fundamental mistakes in defending their case.
At first glance Money Claim Online seems a bit daunting. However read the notes of what you have to do and it really is much easier than you think. There is also a link on the main page to PD 7e which tells you about how to use Money Claim Online. The main things that you need is the Defendant's address - that's the person that owes you money - and a brief outline of the case; oh yes and a way of paying online. The fees vary depending upon how much you are owed, but for me satisfaction was more important than the money.
The court will then send your debtor a notice of issue. This is called "serving". A strange term, but it simply means that you send the papers to the defendant. Or rather the court will. You will get an acknowledgemet through the post that it has been "served" and the debtor then has 28 days in which to file their defence or an Acknowledgement of Service. If they send an Acknowledgement of Service, they then get 28 days from that to file their defence.
So now I was in the system. I had filled my case, it had been served and the ICFBA had acknowledged the claim. So let battle commence.
Thursday 29 May 2008
Get Everything in Writing
So I had my agreement of how I was to get paid. This agreement had come about because of previous late payments that the ICFBA owed me. At one point they owed me £16,000 but that amount was coming down as they honoured their agreement to pay me back. The one problem with the agreement was that they expected me to keep on working for them while they paid it back, or at least that's what they said. Because after cancelling my contract in December they then said that they only agreed to pay me if i carried on doing work for them and as they had cancelled my contract the other agreement was now void.
And here is the problem, the agreement I made was verbal with only a few notes to back it up. Indeed quite a few verbal alterations had been made to my contract over the previous two years, but why worry. After all I was dealing with a company that wanted to create a community of trusted advisors; surely they wouldn't try to screw me over, would they?
It seems so. After several discussions and letters I made them an offer to settle for £5,000. Imagine my surprise then when the very next day they produced an invoice for money that they said I owed them and tried to take that amount off the £5000 and then offer to split the difference - honestly, you couldn't make it up. Needless to say I declned their offer and threatened to take them to court, which I did.
It was then that I entered the world of County Court Judgements and Civil Procedure Rules.
I had never done this before and so I turned to the internet to figure out where to start. And that is what I will tell you about next.
And here is the problem, the agreement I made was verbal with only a few notes to back it up. Indeed quite a few verbal alterations had been made to my contract over the previous two years, but why worry. After all I was dealing with a company that wanted to create a community of trusted advisors; surely they wouldn't try to screw me over, would they?
It seems so. After several discussions and letters I made them an offer to settle for £5,000. Imagine my surprise then when the very next day they produced an invoice for money that they said I owed them and tried to take that amount off the £5000 and then offer to split the difference - honestly, you couldn't make it up. Needless to say I declned their offer and threatened to take them to court, which I did.
It was then that I entered the world of County Court Judgements and Civil Procedure Rules.
I had never done this before and so I turned to the internet to figure out where to start. And that is what I will tell you about next.
You've Got a Debtor
Let me start by saying it is never fun to have to chase a debtor. You do work for someone in good faith and hopefully they pay up, but not always. I hope that my story will help others work their way through the legal system that is there to help you get your money back, but often can't.
I am a Business Performance Coach and I have been delivering consultancy services for a company variously known as ICFBA, International Confederation for Business Advancement and their real name ICFBA Holdings Ltd. Everything was going well until December 2007, when I had an inkling that something was wrong. They cancelled my contract two days after I had just done some work for them and at the time they owed me £6000.
I was a little concerned, but I had an agreement in place with them of how they were to pay off their debt so I hoped that as they are an organisation accrediting the ethical standards of independant consultants that their ethical standards would ensure that I got paid. However it appears that their code of ethics only applies to others, not those running the organisation.
The people that I was dealing with were Steve Ebanja, Alistair Quinlan and Gary Lewis. At the time I thought they were Directors of the Company; I was to find out much later that they were not. It seems that they were only consultants employed by the company while the only real Director lived in the West Indies; but I am getting ahead of myself. Anyhow, these were the people that I had to negotiate with to get my money back.
My next post deals with the initial negotiations.
I am a Business Performance Coach and I have been delivering consultancy services for a company variously known as ICFBA, International Confederation for Business Advancement and their real name ICFBA Holdings Ltd. Everything was going well until December 2007, when I had an inkling that something was wrong. They cancelled my contract two days after I had just done some work for them and at the time they owed me £6000.
I was a little concerned, but I had an agreement in place with them of how they were to pay off their debt so I hoped that as they are an organisation accrediting the ethical standards of independant consultants that their ethical standards would ensure that I got paid. However it appears that their code of ethics only applies to others, not those running the organisation.
The people that I was dealing with were Steve Ebanja, Alistair Quinlan and Gary Lewis. At the time I thought they were Directors of the Company; I was to find out much later that they were not. It seems that they were only consultants employed by the company while the only real Director lived in the West Indies; but I am getting ahead of myself. Anyhow, these were the people that I had to negotiate with to get my money back.
My next post deals with the initial negotiations.
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