On 14/08/2013 13:45, Dave Baker wrote:

"Rick Hughes" wrote in message
...

20 years of experience in county court civil litigation and consumer
rights advice made this a very simple judgement for me. County court
judges are in the law business - not the right and wrong business. They
will rule on the law and not how hard done you felt yourself to be be.

Agreed, although I am slightly surprised there is not an angle of attack
in the unfair contract terms legislation - since he was pushed into
agreeing to a contract without first having sight of it. Perhaps the
argument is that he should have insisted on seeing the full T&Cs first.

The fact that the judge disallowed costs and made a statement about MM's
behaviour showed how strongly he felt about how you were treated but
there was nothing he could have done in law to help you further.

Yup

Unfortunately most of the advice you received on here was based on
complete lack of legal knowledge and just how people felt about the
matter which motivated you to waste even more money on the claim. This

True, although I am sure the OP was well aware of the provenance of the
advice he received.

is irrelevant advice and drowned out the correct advice which was to
swallow your loss. Signal to noise ratio etc or to put it another way,
free advice from non experts is generally worth exactly what you paid
for it. Sorry you lost the filing fee in addition to the cost of the
goods. As you say, caveat emptor and there's no substitute for knowing
your rights. A minimal amount of Googling "before" going back to them to
complain would have avoided the whole mess.

In spite of the poor outcome for the OP, my own feeling is that not all
is lost in this situation - since the result may influence behaviour in
the futu

They have injured their public reputation, and also educated anyone who
reads this account to insist on their statutory rights. I expect a good
number of us will be less willing to give them business in the future,
and be far more robust in dealing with any problems with them.

The fact that their "costs" scare tactic was quashed is obviously for
the greater good - and may make them less likely to attempt that in the
future.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/