There seem to be a lot of Specialist Claim Companies around lately, and one of these companies of which we are receiving enquiries about on a regular basis is the Claims Specialist Group or CSG.
Address: Suite 30, 10 Churchill Square, Kings Hill, Kent ME19 4YU.
Telephone: 01622 804 988, Fax: 01622 804 519
Email: contactus@claimspecialistgroup.com
Website www.claimspecialistgroup.com
They cold call the timeshare owner, and seem to have details about his membership etc., which draws a question mark towards how they got these details?
They offer a “specialist” lawyer service who will assess your case individually and then present you with the outcome of their study and advice you about costs etc.
Nothing wrong so far, but there are some doubtful points in this story…
The website was only created a couple of weeks ago and most of the content only got up and running over the past days!
The company although allegedly based in Kent is actually registered (or they say it is..) in the Virgin Islands, Tortola.
They send of a document as presentation of who they are and what they do, which is full of spelling mistakes which is very unusual for a company that is supposed to handle legal cases and be extra careful on the details.
They cold call the consumers! Where did they get the details from? Nowhere these details are given out in a “legal” way..
Adding to insult, we have a case of a consumer who has been called 4 times now by different “agents” with the same pitch, not being aware this consumer had been called before and even claiming they didn’t recognize the name of the agent that called previously (!!??) Some of the calls were made with only a couple of hours in between.
Have you been called by Claim Specialist Group? Have you sent them the papers? Please let us know!
Mindtimeshare 
We have been contacted by a firm called Zappa management & consulting ,have you heard of them ,I would like a comment please
One other thing about CSG. The credit card payments went to a ‘bank’ called Kyriakides Charala CD 3193. Their reasoning for using a bank outwith the UK was because they specialised in pursuing British banks for recovery of clients money & therefore did not want to bank with them.
At the time this seemed plausible. I cannot find this bank either in Cyprus or elsewhere. Have you guys heard of it?
CSG’s phone number 01622804988 is now ‘not provisioned’ when you try to call it. Looks like they have disappeared with my £1500 which I parted with back in Nov/Dec 2011.
I was contacted today by another company (The National Claims Group) who then e-mailed me some info & the paperwork heading & format is very like CSG??. Maybe I’m just getting neurotic.
Back in November a woman called Katie Morgan of CSG sounded very plausible & spent a good 1/2 hour on the phone telling me how ILG & DWVC etc had ripped me off & CSG would get my money back for me. I have heard nothing since!!
Thanks for the information George.
We will send you more information about the company that has contacted you and also on how to claim a refund for your ILG/DWVC membership.
Kind regards
Customer Care
From Driver.
I was also contacted by C.S.G. who wanted me to pay them £3000 :00 and said they could guarantee to get me £33000 :00 back from reclaim certificate When i told them i had no money they droped the price to £1500 :00 I asked them to make the claim and would pay them double but they were not interested.
I have also been contacted by a new company with the same pitch called CARRILO HERRERA.
They claim to be appointed the liquidator for all pending Reclaim cashback certificates and have got me a settlement of £29576,:60. the money is with the SPANISH tax office and will be paid directly into my account once the local tax has been paid. I was sent a tax form? which was all in spanish which they filled in for me. They phoned me to explain what the form said in english and then came the sting. I had to send 4383 :25 euros to the tax office to get my money releast. The tax form looked like a copy and the bank details looked very false so i showed them to my bank manager who confirmed my dubts..The recipient of the money was S.D.NOBLES. The bank manager said dont sound like a tax office dont pay. I was phoned back today by the con man calling hihself DAVID RICE and told him of my findings and he hung up on me.
Hope this will be of some help to others.
Hi John,
Thanks for your comment and yes this is certainly great information for others looking on the web.
When we hear the Spanish Tax man pitch…well you know there is something wrong straight away, but yes it does look they are copying real forms of the tax man to make it look genuine.
Spanish Tax will never ask for money through an individual and certainly does not hire third party companies to sort out payments.
Kind regards
Customer Care
Hi, I have also been contacted several times by CSG and have sent them copies of paperwork they requested, including copies of cheques with bank details on, should i be worried .
Many Thanks.
Hi Sue,
Thanks for your message.
Do contact them and demand the copies back. They should honor that.
Kind regards
Customer Care
Hi, I have been called several times now from CSG informing me that they can retrieve money spent on Club Class Concierge nearly 5 years ago.I must admit that I am wary of cold callers since being caught out a few years back but these do seem plausible.I have not been asked for money up front and when I queried this was told it was a no win no fee situation and nothing was to be paid as this would come out after the case was won.
I did mention to the caller(Charles Henry)who had a strong american accent that the end of my contract with Club Class wasn’t up till March 2012.so couldn’t really comment on said company till then. but was then told that that would be too late.I am now in a quandry as to what to do. Any advice would be appreciated.
Dear Grant,
Thanks for your message.
We do not like companies who cold call and seem to have all information possible about your membership without having given this to them.
To try and seek a refund for your monies paid to Club Class by credit card you have 6 years from the day the financial transaction took place, so it is only “too late” if these 6 years have passed.
We will send you more information
Kind regards,
Customer Care
Hi All,
I have recently been cold called and emailed by agents for Ramirez & Ramirez aka info@specialist-lawyers.com.
I have also had phone calls & emails from CSG contactus@claimspecialistgroup.com
Both claim to be able to recover money lost to ILG.
Thank you for the information in this thread, which obviously makes me very wary.
Any further information would be gratefully received.
Best Regards,
Roger
I have been contacted by the Claims Specialist Group regarding my DWVC membership monies. They claim to be able to retrieve the £8995 I paid the Incentive Leisure Group to take my timeshare off my hands. They are asking for £1500 up front to cover searches etc. I am very skeptical as to the validity of this company. Can anyone advise
John
Hi John,
Thanks for your message.
We think you have all the reasons to be skeptical about a company who cold calls and knows exactly what you own and what you don’t own.
A lot of money as well to pay upfront!
Kind regards
Customer Care
Hi again
I don’t really feel that you’ve answered my questions and I haven’t had email off you yet. The longer the lawyers work on my claim the harder it will be to justify canceling so I need something concret now, really. At the moment I have no grounds at all for canceling – unless CSG did something illegal during their handling of the claim and i can’t see what which is why i asked your expert advice.
I’ve tried to research things mentioned on this site and trading standards have said they will send me an info sheet on nuisance calls but they said that it is an offense in the uk only under certain conditions. I can get a special call service with BT apparently. I’m going to look into it. they did say though that people phoning from abroad will just ignore it so there you go! i tried to ask about some of my other concerns but i had to leave my number, in the end, as the one who answered the phone couldn’t help. I’ve asked about suing foreign companies through the uk courts so we’ll see what comes back there.
I have asked CSG about cold calling and how did they get my information in the first place. The said they use marketing companies and that they contact people initially to survey them first – which they did. I remember I had to go through a form with someone over the phone. I asked how a marketing company would know I owned a holiday club and they said the usual way they get information is when people have filled in surveys, competitions, forums or anything with questionnaires that ask about holidays and leisure etc. i suppose i have done that a few times in the past so they got me on that one. They went into more detail but i can’t really remember all of it. the woman at trading standards said something similar and to be wary of giving out contact details – especially on the internet, but this is very hard to avoid.
I looked up ramirez like you said and i will not be taking any more of their calls. you are absolutely right about them. if they are in spain and have an address then why have the police not shut them down? I don’t really understand. they seem to have been going for years and no-one does anything. how is that even possible? the one that rang me said they were an actual lawyer. i hope you can do something about them as they sound so convincing!
Anyway, I really need to know what to do about CSG. Thank you.
Unlike the others on this post I did pay the disbursement fee and I am a client of CSG. My lawyer is in the Liverpool area and aside from a lot of paperwork for us to do everything seems fine so far (although it’s early days so far).
Claims lawyers are everywhere you look in the UK these days so we are quite used to them but your comments have worried me a bit. You seem to put a lot of emphasis on cold calling – which is a damn nuisance but everyone is at it here. We must get 5 or 6 calls a day for one thing or another. Are you saying it is illegal to cold call?
Also, everyone advises you not to pay for anything until the work is done but I can’t seem to find lawyers who will do this. Even buying my house I had to stump up for various fees before that sale was complete, and for another legal matter I had to pay money on account (that was a different lawyer to the house purchase). So is it illegal to pay advance fees for legal work in England? I can’t find any evidence to say it is.
What really set me off though is I had 2 calls from the Spanish lawyers Ramirez and Ramirez last week. They have told me I must sue DWVC in the Spanish courts and that a UK lawyer cannot help me at all and that UK lawyers that say they can are a scam. They sounded very convincing. I haven’t brought this up with my lawyer though – I wanted a separate opinion from someone not involved. Who is right? I’m sure you will know the answer to this as you are in Spain. There seems to be a lot of bad stuff about Ramirez but they said they could send me proof of the class action against DWVC but I didn’t want to give them my email or address. Do I need a Spanish lawyer?
I paid CSG by my card so if you tell me they are definitely a scam and that they have acted illegally I can use that to claim my payment back off them if I need to. Now that I have started the process I seem to see comments everywhere telling me I shouldn’t have. I was going to go to their office before but it’s quite far away from me. Do you think it’s worth me going in? It’s a lot nearer to where I live than the law firm.
I have put this post anonymously as I am a client and don’t want to rock any boats with my case but I do feel awful as I think if you’re not lying why not give your name? If I was not a client I definitely would give my full name but I hope you can understand why this time I have not.
Thanks for the great site, by the way. Some of these types of forums are full of comments that you can see are being made up as they go along and have lots of ranting going on and people are rude if you don’t agree with them. This site is very realistic and the comments are more constructive rather than just stating that everything is a scam over and over again. It’s also easy to use. Well done!
Thank you for your comment on the blog.
We agree that Claims Lawyers are everywhere and in the UK it is a very usual thing. Cold calling can be done by any company taking your name and number from a phone book and offering you any service. It is different though when a company cold calls but actually knows you are a potential client for their product, so they have more information on you than what they could obtain from a phone book only..
That is where we have the “doubts”, because timeshare resorts do not provide, sell or pass on the details of their members and any company cold calling you, knowing you are a timeshare owner should either have a clear explanation on how they obtained your details (if you filled in your details online and asked for info) or they got them through a different source which should not happen.
There is no such thing as a “timeshare register” or companies who have provided this info for consumers to be offered a claims service.
It is no longer allowed to take upfront fees for a resale service related to timeshare, and you are right this is not the same as the service offered by a Claims company. But again there are fees and there are fees and we have heard from very large amounts requested upfront.
Regarding Ramirez and Ramirez, you have must have read our blog and there are links to other websites independent from ours where this company is also mentioned.
We will send you more info by email.
Thanks for your kind comments about the blog!
Regards
Customer Care
Hi, I have been contacted by CSG this past week and they told me that they could get me back the monies that i paid out to DWVC and reclaim it was almost £7000 , CSG said that if i paid them £1000 they would be able to reclaim the moneis owed to me within 3 months… I have already been done twice by Off shore soloutions and Halfmoon holdings. and i need to know if this is another scam…could someone please help me as i am at my whits end with all of the calls i keep having..
Aileen
Dear Aileen,
Cold calls and asking for an upfront fee is never really a very good sign and a £1000 pounds is a lot of money for something that isn’t guaranteed.
So please be cautious.
We are sending you more information by email.
Kind regards
Customer Care
My parents have been contacted by CSG claiming they can retrieve their monies from the bank that Intensive Leisure dealt with, this is after my parents paid Intensive Leisure £7000 to take the timeshare off their hands as the maintenance costs were growing higher and higher each year, on the understanding after five years that they could reclaim up to 99% of the ordinal sum, this was on condition the correct paperwork was sent to them in Spain, but since then Intensive Leisure has gone bust, therefore can my parents reclaim any monies from Intensive Leisure’s bank through CSG. can you please help as I don’t want them to get done again.
Max
Hi Max,
Thanks for your message.
As you can read on the blog, the fact they cold call the consumers and ask for an upfront fee is for us always a reason to be very cautious.
We will send you the information by email on which steps you can take regarding ILG.
Kind regards
Customer Care
Hi Folks ,
My comment seems to have upset CSG, and I have had to apoligise for my previous comments. I have no proof at all that suggest to me that CSG is a dodgy company whatsoever.
So I reservably appoligise if any one got the idea that this company is dodgy.
Mike
Hi Mike,
We have noticed that some of the companies who are mentioned on our blog also read our articles and sometimes actually identify the comments from the consumers of being one of their potential customers on their contact lists.
We know of cases where they have actually contacted the consumer and made him feel “uncomfortable” because of the comment.
We are not saying this has happened in your case but it could be and therefore we recommend our consumers to use a Nick Name when commenting on the blog.
Bottom line for us is always the facts that if we write a blog article it because we have received several complaints or emails with serious concerns about these companies.
Most questionable is always the fact they cold call and seem to handle quiet some information on the consumer which has not been provided by the consumer himself.
If at least these companies could come up with a logical and straight forward explanation on the personal data issue..
We still believe it is a lot of money they are asking for (£1200) upfront and you said you already paid £600, maybe this should be enough for them to proceed and take the rest when they succesfully have done the claim?
Kind regards
Customer Care
We have been cold called by CSG and they are very friendly. I have also been called by all sorts of companies want to buy timeshare which we all know is worthless. CSG are now calling every day for the £1200 they want for referal to a soliciter. My wife has given them £600 so far so I guess we have been scammed again.
Mike
Hi Mike,
Don’t pay them anymore money! We will send you more information by email.
Kind regards
Customer Care
Hi I have lft a questin on here and i was wondering if it would be possible for your customer care to help me by sending some details please they said that they will be in touch within the next few days after i have read there Pro Forma Invoice..
Regards Aileen
Yep. This on the back of an OFT legal win against the Timelinx and dwvc, so they say.
Had two phone calls and a letter through the door. Printed on an inkjet, cheap paper and envelope with a first class stamp on. Posted in Medway.
Gramma and spelling mistakes in our details.
The holiday company originally sent info’ out in exactly the same type of envelopes. The kind that are perforated where one sticks the foldover part down.
Claimed their server is down at present and gave a Yahoo ISP address.
Maybe brought down to change the spelling mistakes!
We were called yesterday by Timeshare Exit Solutions (TES) 02034 555288; 02031 377214.
Explaining that we could EITHER get a full re-claim of our deposit (credit card) and final sum (bank transfer) to Incentive Leisure Group from their liquidators – that was likely to cost us about £300 and would cause us a lot of work and hassle.
OR pay TES £399 and they would do it!
No action taken
Michael
Hi,
Thanks for the message. Not a good sign they called you out of the blue and quickly got a figure ready for you to pay!
Seems that there are all off the sudden a lot of companies around who are “experts” in claims, and the names are very similar..like this one where there are a coupe of companies with the same name but not the same phone numbers..
Always be careful!
Kind regards
Customer Care
I have been cold called by a company called “Consumer Claims Direct” they have e mailed a brochure which it seems they carry out claims for all manner of compensation type claims ie. PPI etc etc.
The web site is http://www.consumerclaimsdirect.com and they say they have offices in UK and Spain.
I am always wary of any cold calls now and wondered if you have heard of these people ?.
Dear Martin,
Lately there are more and more companies doing “claims” but as you already said, cold calling is not really a sign for trust. The question always arise, where did they get your details from?
Offices in UK? No address mentioned on the web, only UK phone numbers which we all know can easily be switched to Spain.
All in all, would be extremely careful with this company! And golden rule, no money upfront! Ever!
Regards
Customer Care