CEDR - Conflict Resolution Training and Commercial Mediation Reviews 673

Based on Helen Holmes's "investigation" it appears that the CEDR ignore all the actual complaint points and give the organisation the the answer they want irrespective of the merits of the complaint: a sad waste of money and preventing any improvement.

Edit: In response to the reply, I complained about a statutory body so there is no "commercial practices". Also sadly there's no way I can point out information not considered so not sure how the "must look at all of the information that has been provided" can be guaranteed.

CISAS Case 679792

Complaint against POP Telecom for breach of contract & bad customer service.

Found CISAS’s process administratively well put together, easy to use & efficient, & the matter was expeditiously handled.

The CISAS officials involved, viz., Jane Middleton & D.M. Curnow, were both legal professionals & both handled the case with a high standard of adjudication(s).

The outcome was an ordering of the telecom company back into line with the contract, a reimbursement of excess charges, the issuance of an apology, along with a CISAS Tier 4 compensation award of £200 for the inconvenience & distress caused.

£200 is an inadequate sum for a breach of contract & the inconvenience/distress caused by a corporate entity, but given the antiquated current restrictions in Law upon compensation in these two areas, CISAS as a pioneer entity is going as far as it currently can with this award, which in consequence was appreciated.

I sold an item worth £750 abroad and that was sold via eBay. The item was not delivered within two months, so eBay sided with the buyer. Then Royal Mail finally delivered it after another 1.5 months. I sent countless requests to Royal Mail asking them to stop the delivery, but they ignored them, allowing the scammer to receive the item. Because of the late delivery, I lost the chance to appeal the eBay refund to the buyer! Today, CEDR decided I'm not entitled to any compensation. How pathetic! Please never use Royal Mail or CEDR! They are both incompetent and pathetic.Reference: POST006597

CEDR failed to address any of the issues I raised against my broadband provider and in summing up her rejection of the case Jane Middleton, their adjudicator, stated and I quote: "The customer has commented that they have a record of a call for 26 April 2024. However, this would have been before they agreed to close their complaint on 20 April 2024."

I hadn't agreed to close my complaint - that's why I went to Cedr and secondly my advice to anyone holding out a shred of hope that it will be a professional service may be sorely disappointed - studying the case in front of them, dates included, in my experience, is not their strong point.

Update 28/07/2024 … case completed and confirmed by credible independent financial conduct authority , it couldn’t have been found any other favour with the clear evidence I provided with the lies proven from the person representing sky … you at CEDR are not worth the time or effort least there are companies willing to do the right thing …

Reply to comment from Cedr ….. 03/07/2024…. You have already confirmed you receive funding from companies including sky , I have since taken this case to the financial conduct authority who in fact are in my opinion a much more trustworthy company to use , they actually take time to read the case and definitely do not read misleading comments made by sky , your so called independent auditor could not of read the case submitted by myself as the evidence that was given was 100% proven that sky was in breach of there contract yet found nothing wrong with it you as a company going on a lot of reviews do not prove to be in my opinion competent in handing genuine claims and I would advise anyone who would ask me that my experience shows this I will let the real independent ombudsman deal with my case your reply proves your just a paper exercise for bit companies like sky to help them get away with poor service and brush it under the carpet

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Independent… what a load of rubbish … the whole process is child like and unprofessional i followed there process involving Sky and there own admission of breaches in their contract , they increased there charges by 11.48% they failed in customer service treatment which was all laid out for them to review it seems very clear that they didn’t read my complaint and took the words of sky to be gospel not only did sky miss out huge parts of the complaint but also stated they didn’t increase the contract more then 10% which was so clearly the case that they did this company adjudicated poorly and seems like they have a vested interest to find in favour of big companies and do not care the child like online process is very poor and I was extremely sceptical that they were owned in part by sky I have to say that I would never recommend this company they just a paper exercise for big companies and nothing you actually state is taken into account Gerhardt Will my so called adjudicator in particular has been in my opinion very bias and seems so obvious that he didn’t read the complaint from the customers point of view … I won’t be using this company again they shouldn’t be allowed to part of any process it’s not a professional outfit and not a credible company to use and has no bearing on if you take action against the big firms

A brilliant course- intensive and thoroughly enjoyable too. The trainers were excellent. I learnt a lot and was inspired to carry on learning.

Mediation at its worse. Don't bother wasting your time.

CEDR offers unrivaled mediation and negotiation training in the UK. A very comprehensive course which was perfectly balanced between practical and theoretical skills.

Excellent MST course. Materials and Faculty members extremely impressive.

I raised a dispute about Asda Mobile Services. CEDR found that I had 'suffered distress and inconvenience and that compensation is due to the customer.' The compensation? £10.

The written ruling from CEDR is incoherent, illogical, and contradictory, and staggeringly was written by someone who has a LLM. CEDR is funded by the corporations that ill-treat the consumers. We need a body that can deal with consumer complaints. Not an amateurish, not-for-profit where the wage bill for the adjudicators is higher than the rightful compensation awarded to the wronged consumer, who can not appeal the ruling.

I have wasted hours of my time reading and compiling documents and replying to CEDR via their rubbish portal. It was a total waste of my time. Either go to court or just forget about your complaint. I have contacted my MP to say how useless the CEDR is, and that we need a better organisation to deal with consumer disputes.

Wow! An organisation who's funding comes from the large corporations we are complaining about. What could possibly go wrong? A bit like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.
When a corporation unfortunately, or perhaps conveniently, have no record of an alleged telephone call, and despite the customer having made four similar calls to other organisations, apparently, on the balance of probabilities, the corporation must be right and the customer a liar. These people really shouldn't be throwing around phrases they don't understand the meaning of.
Furthermore, when a large corporation choose to stop providing a service, the customer must contact them to cancel their account. If they fail to do so, the customer remains liable for the contractual monthly payments and the corporation carry no such similar contractual obligation to actually provide the service being charged for. Nor can they, in any way be deemed to have fallen below the standard to be reasonably expected, because, of course, a service provider cannot reasonably be expected to actually provide a service, can they?
Finally, after the dependant adjudicator has reached their entirely biased and partial decision, you have three "choices". You may accept the decision, in which case the case is closed and the large corporation has more money to add to its multi million pounds profits. Alternatively, you can reject the decision. In this case, the case is closed and the large corporation has more money to add to its multi million pounds profits. The third "choice" is to do nothing, then after six weeks, they will automatically take it as a rejection of the decision, or is it acceptance? Doesn't really matter as the outcome is identical.
In all cases, no matter how ridiculous, the adjudicator's decision is final and there is zero recourse for the aggrieved party to question or appeal it.

Edit 26.06.24
Firstly, I would urge The CEDR Management Team to be careful about assuming a person's gender. I've been called lots of things in my time, but never Ms.

The response from this organisation, I think, sums them up perfectly.

No explanation of how, when neither party can evidence that a particular conversation either did or did not take place, the balance of probabilities somehow, magically falls in favour of the multi million pounds corporation.

No explanation of how, when a corporation visit your address and physically disconnect you from the service they are supposed to be providing, that corporation cannot be deemed to have fallen below the standard reasonably expected.

No explanation of how, having been physically disconnected from a service, by the provider, the customer is still contractually liable to pay for the service they are no longer being provided with.

Instead, all we get is a lot of word salad about how the funding that results in their partiality and bias works. It is even suggested that if it wasn't done this way, there may not be a service at all, without any appreciation that the service may as well not exist when the only ones receiving any service are the multi million pounds corporations.

In short, this service is worth every penny that each party pays into it.

British Airlines ignored my parties claim for more than 7 months after they cancelled our flight from London to Seattle an put us in a mold riddled motel serving contaminated food.

We engaged an attorney for a very reasonable $3500 of demand between 4 people. CEDR reached out on behalf of BA and tried to side step our legal counsel and get us to agree to a settlement of $1648.54.
As soon as we REJECTED this settlement CEDR messaged us again (side stepping our lawyer again) and unilaterally declared that we had accepted their lower settlement and the case was closed.

This is what BA and CEDR apparently call a good faith negotiation.

IMO Don't waste your time with CEDR, just go for the maximum amount that small claims will let you and drag them into court to be accountable for their poor behavior and customer mistreatment.

Update 3 Jul - to date, we have yet to receive payment from BA and CEDR continues to give us generic cut and paste response. We suspect BA either are incapable to make international remittance or they have not received the correct bank details from CEDR. In either case, it's coming up to a year since the incident. We given CEDR an UK bank acc to rely to BA but again, it seem either BA did not receive or refuse to acknowledge the updated info. This has been continuously frustrating.
Had a horrid experience with BA which end up having to pay over £2000 for a new flight. CEDR did help us win a dispute with BA however the payment has taken nearly a year and still unpaid. While this maybe the incompetence of BA, not understanding how to process international remittance, CEDR is the only channel we can speak to to reach BA. For months, we have insisted with CEDR that the compensation have not been received (we can proof with bank statements), offered an UK bank accounts for BA to transfer to. CEDR had ignore all of these and just repeats to closing the case as they assume the compensation has been paid.

Don't expect much support. CEDR are paid for by the airlines and are neither Independent not Objective. You will have no choice but to go with CEDR for certain airlines and they know fine well that they will likely succeed. Even CEDR's own stats show that cases are determined in an airline's favour over 50% of the time. (No surprise they will quote overall figures which are better - but specifically for airline disputes, they are shocking)

I would recommend if you are planning to escalate your complaint, either go it independently or engage a support service (NOT CEDR) / solicitor to take it via small claims court. You will more likely succeed.

A waste of time also, it took them 8 months to deal with my case and come to a resolution.

We are extremely disappointed with our experience with CEDR Resolve regarding a recent ruling. The adjudicator failed to consider any of the evidence we submitted, leaving us feeling unheard and disregarded. If this had been a court of law, their assessment would have been severely criticized and discredited.

To make matters worse, the lack of an appeal process means that we are forced to accept their decision, which feels unjust. Their standards are astonishingly low, as they considered a response to a Sunday complaint on the following Monday as "too slow." This does not reflect the high level of service that any customer should expect.

Overall, our experience has been frustrating and disappointing, and we cannot in good conscience recommend their services. They clearly do not serve the best interests of either party involved.

Yet another corrupted / incompetent / ineffective organization, staffed by semi-literate people, without conscience, unable to read Consumer documents due to the wearing of dark glasses. They are unable to review their way out of a paper bag, let alone the Solicitors' Republican Army. Get rid of all these Levy Payer leeches !

If i could leave less than one star i would / just dont waste your time, they will ! they are in pocket of telecomms companies , best not waste time just go direct small claims with them

All funded and aided by the companies so they take their sides. Sky refused to acknowledge my request to have a 3 month payment holiday during covid when I was hospitalised. They cancelled all my bills which some were up to date for a tablet. I missed a £10 phone bill which cancelled the direct debit but my bank wouldn’t sort it from hospital. So they cancelled all my bills and charged me £200 for the mobile sim even though I couldn’t use it. Contacted CEDR who took skys side claiming there is no evidence of me asking for payment break. Sky conveniently don’t have the recording as it was done on the chatbot. And can’t find the phone call recording. I tried to pay the bill on to a 0% balance transfer and they declined telling me to ring another number. Next thing I know they have sent the debt to CARS debt collection claiming iv refused to contact them about the charges. I have screenshots of contacting them to pay I made sure I recorded the conversation this time. But they told me they will not accept complaint and to deal with the debt collection agency. Yet again CARS will not acknowledge complaint. Complete waste of time. Clearly funded to aid the large corporate companies.

COULD MAKE THINGS MUCH WORSE FOR YOU, OUT OF TOUCH, BIASED, KNOW , AND CARE VERY LITTLE ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH OR THE MENTAL HEALTH ACT, COULDNT CARE LESS. EXTREMELY COLD.
THEY ARE FOR BIG MONEY CORPERATE NOT, THE LITTLE MAN.THEY DONT CARE ABOUT THE EQUALITY ACT, THEY DONT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT FCA PROCEDURES, PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES, ONCE ASSIGNED TO AN ADJUDICATOR CASE WORKER, ITS BASICALLY OVER VERY QUICKLY THEY TICK CONVENIENT BOXES AND CHURN OUT A DECISION BASED ON BIASED NONSENSE, THEY ARE DEFINITELY NOT OBJECTIVE, OR FAIR.