Analysis: ‘No need to pay for a pointless service again’

THE televison commercial is persuasive. The voice-over is friendly, but authoritative. The woman on screen grins broadly as she opens the envelope and takes out a cheque.

What the voice-over does not mention is that the amount would be even larger if she hadn’t forked out an unnecessary fee to this company for the privilege.

Keen to help you out, an industry of Claims Management Companies (CMCs), cold-call, or dominat daytime TV ads, offering to sort out all the legal technicalities and paperwork – for a small fee. Fair enough?

Not really. We’ve seen cases of CMCs charging their customers hundreds or thousands of pounds, without actually doing very much.

There is a real irony about this. The reason why people are being allowed to reclaim PPI in the first place is because they’d been misled into paying for something they didn’t need. Now many of those same people are making the same mistake again – signing up to another fee which is not really necessary.

You are of course free to pay someone to act on your behalf if you want to. But they will not do anything that you cannot easily do yourself.

• Keith Dryburgh is social policy officer at Citizens Advice Scotland