I write in response to the letter entitled ‘A sad day for the profession’ from Mr Barley of QualitySolicitors Norton Peskett that featured in last week’s Gazette.

Mr Barley comments that he does not know if the call was made by a firm of solicitors or a claims manager (which I take to read claims management company (CMC)), yet states that he feels that the phone call ‘exemplifies the very worst of our profession’. Whose profession is he talking about? He does not know who made the call.

I would venture to suggest that the call was not unsolicited. I suspect that Mr Barley, like so many others who complain about receiving cold calls, has ticked a box on a survey or some other form that allows his details to be passed on to ‘interested third parties’, and that the call has come from one such interested third party. I would also suggest that the call was not made by a solicitors’ firm (located in the north-west or elsewhere) but by an opportunistic CMC.

The caller knew nothing of the accident Mr Barley had been involved in. They asked a very general, open question (whether Mr Barley had been involved in an accident in the last two years). When Mr Barley answered that he had, this led the caller to make the bold statement that the insurance company had put ‘£1,850 to one side’. For what? How would the insurers (whichever insurers they may be) know that £1,850 was sufficient compensation for him? The simple answer is that they wouldn’t.

The caller and the firm he works for are playing a numbers game. Ask enough people the same question and make a bold statement about compensation, and you might just hook a client. It is the same crude methodology used by CMCs to tout for payment protection insurance work.

I too wish Mr Barley had kept the number of the company that rang him so that he could have investigated what had happened to him more thoroughly, rather than just writing a letter to vent his frustration at receiving a telephone call from an organisation that he has more than likely agreed to have his details passed on to.

I also wish he had kept the number so that he could have investigated what had happened and then complained to the relevant regulatory body, rather than making such broad, sweeping comments that the phone call ‘exemplifies the very worst of our profession’. I hope that he will now continue to defend the reputation of his colleagues in the RTA claimant personal injury profession.

Robin Torr, Abacus Solicitors, Manchester