Unfortunately, when you've been scammed, it is unlikely that you will get your money back. But
sometimes, with the dogged determination of our lawyers, the unlikely happens. All names have been
changed.
Tom is 86 years old, lives in a retirement village and is his wife's carer. When his
recently-purchased second hand car ground to a halt, Tom assumed that the engine failure was covered
under warranty. However the manufacturer refused warranty coverage, saying immediately that the
dodgy engine was not a manufacturing defect, but due to a poor service history of the vehicle. In
other words - the car we sold you must have been badly-treated by the previous owner, and it is not
our fault that the engine blew up straightaway. Tom needed his car, and had to borrow funds to pay
for the cost of a second-hand replacement engine.
After we became involved and raised the manufacturer's responsibilities under the Australian
Consumer Law, the car company paid up Tom's engine replacement and towing costs of $11,028. Tom told us that: "it's wonderful that there are companies
who will help the "little man" against large companies, we in our wildish dream never thought this
would happen. Thank you again."
Steve has been homeless on and off since 2009, and suffers from a brain injury. He relies solely on
the disability support pension as his income. In late 2020, he applied to a payday lender for a
short-term loan of $230. Months later he had repaid a total of $210,
and somehow still owed $557.45, including $537.45 in service fees.
We wrote to the lender to demand that they waive the debt, on the basis of their unconscionable
conduct. The lender agreed to end the loan for a final payment of $170 and the remainder of the fees
were waived. John was extremely relieved with this outcome.
Robert, a pensioner, was the victim of a remote access scam in which
his life savings of $900 had been stolen from his bank account. Robert had been saving the money to
service a bond on a rental property and without the money he faced homelessness. With our
assistance, Robert's bank agreed to refund the stolen money on compassionate grounds.
Jasmine is a young, single parent whose sole income is government benefits. In 2019, she leased a
mobile phone, television, iPad and video game from a well-known rental provider. She was paying over
$200 a fortnight, despite her financial hardship. When Jasmine came to us, she had already made
repayments well over what it would have cost her to have bought the products outright.
We helped Jasmine to negotiate an end to the leases, and secured the rental provider's agreement not
to seek any further payments, or require the return of the goods, or make an adverse credit listing
against Jasmine. Without our help, Jasmine still would have had $9,000 of further payments to make
under the leases. What a rort.
Our client has a mild intellectual disability, and lives in regional Queensland. He was talked over
the phone into enrolling in an online education course. The salesperson did not disclose that
graduation would require 480 hours of practical placement. Our client could not possibly have
completed those placement hours, especially during COVID. We negotiated the refund of $4,906 in course fees.