[Tannaton]

(Copy of a post I did in the Lounge a few weeks ago)

It's a "Class Action" attempt by a growing population of the legal profession who aren't interested in honesty or people's well being.

The process is simple in practice, if a large corporation did something which "injured" a large number of people (physically or financially) by joining a "class-action" claim the matter is dealt with by the courts as a whole rather than each claimant having to start their own claim, deal with the court themselves and the courts having to assess each individual claim.

The first step the solicitors have to do is amass a list of "opt-in" claimants - those people who may have a case. The do this with sponsored ads on Facebook and other social media, it's relatively cheap to do that and in many cases they will actually make some money in the process through clickable ads on their own website...

Once they have gathered a number of people - say 500,000 Volvo owners, they can go through the process to start the class action claim, even though the likelihood of a successful outcome might be very low. In the process of that they will likely ask for what would seem a small administration fee from the claimants - say £35. If just half of they 500,000 pay that, it's nearly 9 million quid. They then go to court, if they lose they'll keep the change, if they win the claimants will get a share of the winnings net of even more deductions for expensive fees and lunches.

The ads are just laughable clickbait - I went onto a Vauxhall one this week and put the registration number of my compact tractor in and it said I could be due compensation...

Class actions are a good thing when it comes to situations like people harmed by working in industry which damaged their health or drugs with harmful side effects that were not declared, but the problem is it is now mostly abused by shyster legal firms. The ads on social medial are suggesting that car owners could get up to £10,000 compensation when really I don't think there is a single car owner of any vehicle (even if fitted with "cheat" software) that could substantiate they suffered losses remotely near to that value (remember class actions are about compensating individuals' losses - it's not usually about punitive fines and other sanctions). If you read the classified ads the diesel scandals don't seem to have dented re-sale values of cars, which I think would be the main feature of any claim.

Where you ever mis-sold PPI? Well now you might have been mis-sold TDI. My Facebook feed is now poisoned with these ads for owners of Mercedes, Volvo, Audi, Vauxhall etc. It's 99% a legalised scam as the firms are pressing on with it and the chances of anyone getting anything are very remote.

I have not read or seen a single piece of evidence that Volvo ever "cheated" the emissions testing.