Dennings Solicitors Limited

It is not possible to please every client nevertheless we are obliged however to respond when an inaccurate review has been posted. We were first contacted by this client in May 2023. 15 emails were exchanged . No payment was made in relation thereto. We were further contacted once more in January 2024. Advice was required regarding a taxi appeal in London. We are based in the Midlands and so is the client. It was therefore known from the outset that this matter would require travelling to London and return (approximately 5 hours) in addition to the time we would be at court on his behalf. Our fees would also include preparation and office attendances. A client care letter (with our terms and conditions) was sent in January 2024 requesting a retainer/deposit of £422 . It was made clear therein that the deposit was not the totality of our fees and we would provide a full breakdown of our costs once we had all of the facts and were able to do so. Our client care letter highlighted the following in italics:- Please note that it is our policy not to attend any hearing on your behalf unless we have been paid in full and in advance. The client was over 4 months late paying the deposit. HIs one and only payment to us was £422 paid on 30th May. This amount had been requested in January. Despite not having received anything from him we continued preparing his case in good faith. This include him attending our office so that we could obtain full details about the facts of his appeal to assist us in the preparation of his appeal. We of course also had to correspond with the client, TFL and indeed the court from time to time. The client also attended our offices for a second time to finalise his instructions to us prior to his appeal hearing date. We sent him a detailed breakdown of the work that we had undertaken and an estimate of the work which needed to be done which of course involved our preparing for a full contested taxi appeal hearing, travelling to London and return and presenting his appeal before the court. We had quoted for a full days work. We also quoted for a return taxi journey to the train station and return 2nd class rail travel to London. The balance required from the client (inclusive of VAT and the travelling disbursements ) was approximately £1600. He had been told that his deposit (paid in excess of 4 months late) had been fully utilised and indeed comfortably exceeded with the work undertaken up to the point that we sent him our detailed estimate. He has not had a bill. We sent an estimate. The client wrote to us stating that he could not afford our fees. The figure he suggested was approximately 30% of what we had quoted. Our file reflected in excess of 50 emails sent and received . It is appreciated that some of these were routine/short but nevertheless that is a considerable amount of work. There were also several calls to the court at various times. There were also two office attendances. In total that amounted to approximately 7 hours work. We informed him that what he had offered was not acceptable. He did not come back to us with a further proposal and indeed did not make any payments to us over and above the initial deposit. Having been made aware that the work we had undertaken had comfortably exceeded the deposit he had paid us it was therefore unrealistic for him to expect us to expect a refund when in reality we have not been fully paid for what we have done. The client wrote to us indicating that if his offer to us was not acceptable then he would represent himself at court. We replied and informed him that in those circumstances we could not travel to London and present his appeal without being in funds. We are therefore very disappointed that he chose to post an inaccurate review in such terms. At no time was the client misled. It was his choice not to pay us and to represent himself at court . We are of course entitled to charge for our professional services.

Many thanks for your kind words. Very much appreciated.