How much to claim from small Claims Court?

Archeotech

Hi

I'm trying to get some info for someone who attended GamerCon at the weekend which you might've seen on the news for the disaster it was with overbookings, 3 hour long queues outside in the rain and 3hr long queues inside the venue. All a very poor experience and not worth the money.

Now it costs €25 to make a claim in small claims court but how much could be claimed? Would it only be the €25 ticket or can you claim travel expenses, and just personal stress and waste of time and look for €500 or €1000?

Apparently although the organiser has stated they are giving refunds nobody is sure how to proceed when the ticket was bought with cash at gamestop and some want more than just a refund for how much hassle they got.

News article on the event.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/families-left-fuming-as-hundreds-turned-away-from-overbooked-gamercon-dublin-35543590.html

Any advice? Thanks!

guil

Is this a wind up?

dudara

Info on the Small Claims Court process here.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/justice/courts_system/small_claims_court.html

In general, you cannot claim for damages, only for the amount you are outt of pocket. I'm not sure if this situation qualifies for the SSC, but the Registrar would be able to advise you. And I also doubt you'll get far if you haven't tried to claim a refund first.

Paulw

Did you read the terms and conditions on your ticket for GamerCon? You will have a very hard time winning a case.

You can claim for direct expenses, once you have proof - event ticket, travel (with receipts), food (with receipts), etc. But, since these would likely have been purchased if you had entered, you are likely to only get back the price of the ticket.

And, I believe that GamerCon are offering to refund that already, so you will be better off just doing that, since you would be down €25 (small claims fee) otherwise.

ienduredQcon

so ive been researching this all day. the statutory rights which by the way are not affected by anyone claiming "no refunds" you can say that all you want but you still have statutory rights in this country. if the service failed to take due care and attention is number one, two is if the organizers had not the skill to provide the service as advetized, and three if the materials were not fit for purpose, on all three of these accounts they are absolutely at fault. although that has to be determined by a judge. also any costs incurred as a direct result of the service or good going kaput..ie if yoru computer goes on fire and burns down your house you can sue for those damages, or if as a result of someone saying they would provide a service like fixing a pipe and they just used sellotape and the pipe leaked ... you are able to claim for this also. but I do not think that is froms mall claims. I think that is a proper law suite.

I think that everyone who attended those who got ina nd those who did not should be sueing this man .////Ferdinand Roberts is his name... for every penny. as a class action law suite perhaps. if this was America and you went to the superbowl and there was just a bowl in the center of the pitch then do you think people would just be sueing for their money back? hellz to the hellz no. I think the volunteers should be sueing him, they had no support were ill equipped to deal with things, the convention center staff had to take over because all the gamecon paid staff were hiding in the back having lunch I wandered around the place I talked to dinner ladies, they hid in back while volunteers who were short on the ground, dealt as best they could, and while the convention center staff tried to at least take over managing people. but it is not their responsibility to provide something to do when in there, and there was nothing to do in there. you couldn't play a game unless you already had an account and had bought the game! some of the retro games you didn't have to buy and perhaps others but we never got to any other tables than the steam table which you had to have an account for and a few ohter game stations. it was basically like signing into a library computer.

the site says there would be expos, there was not one exposition of a product on display the whole day there. you know you were there I don't need to tell you. I really would like to see a class action law suite for this entire thing to see this man become3 sbankrupt, is investigated because I am sure there is plenty of evidence somewhere that he never had any intention of providing a service to us.

there are so many accounts on which this guy can be sued, false advertising, he failed to provide many of the claims made on the website, and to be honest we are all going to have to start standing up for our statutory rights and our consititution if we are to get anywhere. the businesses are getting meaner and the people are getting more complacent. for people to assume there is no chance to sue this guy I would advise you to look on the consumer website at the conditions that must be met by a good or service and for which your rights apply. the list is not long and on all points the company failed to meet those conditions. so just assuming theres nothing to do except suck it up and get walked over cos its Ireland. is an abysmal attitude to have and one which I can hardly blame the man for taking advantage of.

Archeotech

This is for someone I know and kinda curious about the small claims court process. I read the link before posting along with similar descriptions but nothing said about how much you can claim on something/ Like if I had a problem with something that cost me €5 is it possible to claim the €25 it cost to make the claim from the person I'm suing assuming I win the case?

I was asking if you could claim travel expenses/food etc if you didn't get in as several thousand people didn't through no fault of theirs.

In the case I mentioned they purchased their tickets at Gamestop (I don't think Gamestop are handling refunds) using cash and Gamercon told them to contact them for a refund but they took down this contact form on the website over the weekend and won't respond to people on facebook. Obviously if you used paypal or credit cards there are customer protection policies you can use or if you used eventbrite then I think there is also a way.

Also you should be aware that the terms and conditions for Gamercon were changed over the weekend during the event after people had purchased their tickets so they don't really mean much.

ienduredQcon

small claims court is up to 2000 euro

ienduredQcon

it doesn't matter what their terms and conditions are, your statutory rights are not affected and they should actually say this at the end of any random claims that you cant get a refund. anyone in Ireland is entitled to get a refund whether the seller says so or not. you cant just put up a sign saying no backsies and run off counting your cash. that's not how the law works. people have rights and those rights are there whether you say no backsies or not.

njs030

ienduredQcon wrote: »

so ive been researching this all day.
I really would like to see a class action law suite

During your research you should have discovered there's no such thing as class action in Ireland.

ienduredQcon

didn't get that far yet I am afraid. managed to get a good bit of info from the consumer rights people looking at legal speak has made my eyes bend so have taken a break. there must be something similar I mean it would seem a waste of the courts time to take on individuals when there is a huge body of people all with the same complaint. surely we have something?

bill66

I have used the SCC on a number of occasions, you get the fee back if you win. I don't think they will entertain consequential losses for something like this, but you should check with the court to be certain.
If you paid for your ticket by credit card, ring the card issuer and ask for a chargeback, you did not get what you paid for.

ienduredQcon

In Ireland the preferred approach to multi-party actions is the ‘test case’. Where several separate claims arising out of the same circumstances are pending against a defendant or defendants, the first case to be litigated becomes the benchmark by which the remaining cases are resolved, this is referred to as the ‘test case’. The ‘test case’ is representative and allows a judge to hear the case of a single claimant which is effectively a generic case representing all of the other potential claimants in the same class. The effect of this is to save the courts considerable time as a Judge does not have to hear scores of individual cases.
To be valid as a class action or a multiparty action the claimants must take legal action together based on the same or a similar event causing similar injuries against the same potential defendant.
Multi party actions arise as a result of a wide variety of circumstances including, but not limited to:

Samuel T. Cogley

This is possibly more suited to legal discussion but certain under certain contracts you can claim for loss of the 'experiance'. This AFAIK has only ever applied to holidays, and generally involved cases where lawyers where the plaintiff! However it's not beyond the relam of possibility that one could try it with a day out. However expect it to be contested and that would mean a full hearing in front of a judge, thats assuming the SmCC procedure could even be used.

Archeotech

ienduredQcon wrote: »

small claims court is up to 2000 euro

I saw that but I don't think for a €25 ticket you can just say I want €2000 but if you factor in travel, food, and stress, you should be able to claim more but just wondering if those are valid in the SCC.

Sorry for anybody who finds this thread disagreeable, just genuinely looking for info on an aspect of the SCC that's not really covered online and thanks to all helping.

Samuel T. Cogley

Archeotech wrote: »

I saw that but I don't think for a €25 ticket you can just say I want €2000 but if you factor in travel, food, and stress, you should be able to claim more but just wondering if those are valid in the SCC.

Sorry for anybody who finds this thread disagreeable, just genuinely looking for info on an aspect of the SCC that's not really covered online and thanks to all helping.

You would have to have easily identifiable damages. E.g reciepts. Stress etc. is unlikely to be considered but if it is it's going to be a very small amount. If you're genuinely serious about this as a point of principle you should get togeather and take a case (one of ye with the rest chipping in) in the District Court with a solicitor. You can then all looking at piling in with a case that's already been ran as a template.

If you do genuinely start to make a dent though expect the company to shut up shop.

Cabaal

Class action lawsuits and claiming for stress etc, an awful lot of misinformed people in this thread.

Watching too much US tv shows I think

ienduredQcon

we need class action law suites in Ireland. that's omething people spend their carrers campaigning for for many years. and the lack of those abilities is a huge hinderence to getting through cases where large amounts of people are out of pocket etc. stress maybe not, but consequential losses yes. if a service causes consequential loss you can sue for that. its not ill informed. I would say its more ill informed to not know the rights you have as a consumer or to think that there is now law for redressing these issues. there are laws. and there is a huge need for white collar crime prosecution in Ireland. which you would think we would be informed of considering the amount of times we have been ripped off by corrupt business taking public funds in the last few decades.

ohnonotgmail

ienduredQcon wrote: »

we need class action law suites in Ireland. that's omething people spend their carrers campaigning for for many years. and the lack of those abilities is a huge hinderence to getting through cases where large amounts of people are out of pocket etc. stress maybe not, but consequential losses yes. if a service causes consequential loss you can sue for that. its not ill informed. I would say its more ill informed to not know the rights you have as a consumer or to think that there is now law for redressing these issues. there are laws. and there is a huge need for white collar crime prosecution in Ireland. which you would think we would be informed of considering the amount of times we have been ripped off by corrupt business taking public funds in the last few decades.

would you care to summarise those laws that apply to the OP?

ienduredQcon

you can look up your consumer rights on the consumer rights Ireland website, or give them a call and they can explain better than I could. I cant post links yet, but if you just google it it should be listed near the top. there are unfortunately no means to bring about any laws about a class action law suite in Ireland even if there was such a law there is no funding to prosecute a company in this way. I know Stephen Donnelly of soc dems was talking about it last year he proposed that a portion of funds be given to the department so they could actually carry out prosecution against companies. it didn't pass... and there are whole websites dedicated to examining the laws and need for laws in Ireland, from humanitarian grounds to things like tax evasion nd everything in between, but I'm not a lawyer so youd be better to look up the wording of such laws yourself as they can be hard to interpret.for me anyway. so better to go directly to the information than get it second hand from my hearsay.

ohnonotgmail

ienduredQcon wrote: »

you can look up your consumer rights on the consumer rights Ireland website, or give them a call and they can explain better than I could. I cant post links yet, but if you just google it it should be listed near the top. there are unfortunately no means to bring about any laws about a class action law suite in Ireland even if there was such a law there is no funding to prosecute a company in this way. I know Stephen Donnelly of soc dems was talking about it last year he proposed that a portion of funds be given to the department so they could actually carry out prosecution against companies. it didn't pass... and there are whole websites dedicated to examining the laws and need for laws in Ireland, from humanitarian grounds to things like tax evasion nd everything in between, but I'm not a lawyer so youd be better to look up the wording of such laws yourself as they can be hard to interpret.for me anyway. so better to go directly to the information than get it second hand from my hearsay.

class action suits for tax evasion? I think you're a little bit confused.

what laws in particular are you referring to?

Elemonator

ienduredQcon wrote: »

so ive been researching this all day. the statutory rights which by the way are not affected by anyone claiming "no refunds" you can say that all you want but you still have statutory rights in this country. if the service failed to take due care and attention is number one, two is if the organizers had not the skill to provide the service as advetized, and three if the materials were not fit for purpose, on all three of these accounts they are absolutely at fault. although that has to be determined by a judge. also any costs incurred as a direct result of the service or good going kaput..ie if yoru computer goes on fire and burns down your house you can sue for those damages, or if as a result of someone saying they would provide a service like fixing a pipe and they just used sellotape and the pipe leaked ... you are able to claim for this also. but I do not think that is froms mall claims. I think that is a proper law suite.

I think that everyone who attended those who got ina nd those who did not should be sueing this man .////Ferdinand Roberts is his name... for every penny. as a class action law suite perhaps. if this was America and you went to the superbowl and there was just a bowl in the center of the pitch then do you think people would just be sueing for their money back? hellz to the hellz no. I think the volunteers should be sueing him, they had no support were ill equipped to deal with things, the convention center staff had to take over because all the gamecon paid staff were hiding in the back having lunch I wandered around the place I talked to dinner ladies, they hid in back while volunteers who were short on the ground, dealt as best they could, and while the convention center staff tried to at least take over managing people. but it is not their responsibility to provide something to do when in there, and there was nothing to do in there. you couldn't play a game unless you already had an account and had bought the game! some of the retro games you didn't have to buy and perhaps others but we never got to any other tables than the steam table which you had to have an account for and a few ohter game stations. it was basically like signing into a library computer.

the site says there would be expos, there was not one exposition of a product on display the whole day there. you know you were there I don't need to tell you. I really would like to see a class action law suite for this entire thing to see this man become3 sbankrupt, is investigated because I am sure there is plenty of evidence somewhere that he never had any intention of providing a service to us.

there are so many accounts on which this guy can be sued, false advertising, he failed to provide many of the claims made on the website, and to be honest we are all going to have to start standing up for our statutory rights and our consititution if we are to get anywhere. the businesses are getting meaner and the people are getting more complacent. for people to assume there is no chance to sue this guy I would advise you to look on the consumer website at the conditions that must be met by a good or service and for which your rights apply. the list is not long and on all points the company failed to meet those conditions. so just assuming theres nothing to do except suck it up and get walked over cos its Ireland. is an abysmal attitude to have and one which I can hardly blame the man for taking advantage of.

First of all its lawsuit, not law suite. This is not a hotel room we are talking about.

Second of all, this is not America, it is Ireland. No such thing as a class action lawsuit here.

Archeotech wrote: »

Hi

I'm trying to get some info for someone who attended GamerCon at the weekend which you might've seen on the news for the disaster it was with overbookings, 3 hour long queues outside in the rain and 3hr long queues inside the venue. All a very poor experience and not worth the money.

Now it costs €25 to make a claim in small claims court but how much could be claimed? Would it only be the €25 ticket or can you claim travel expenses, and just personal stress and waste of time and look for €500 or €1000?

Apparently although the organiser has stated they are giving refunds nobody is sure how to proceed when the ticket was bought with cash at gamestop and some want more than just a refund for how much hassle they got.

News article on the event.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/families-left-fuming-as-hundreds-turned-away-from-overbooked-gamercon-dublin-35543590.html

Any advice? Thanks!

You could probably claim for just the ticket price. All travel tickets etc slim chance if you had receipts but unlikely I would imagine.

You were stressed because you had to wait in a queue for a few hours?

Stop making a mockery of our justice system.

Samuel T. Cogley

Elemonator wrote: »

Stop making a mockery of our justice system.

What an utterly ridiculous statement.

At worst the OP is a bit confused. There is existing jurisprudence that when one is paying for something like a holiday there is an opening to claim for elements like stress. This is extremely narrow and AFAIR refers only to package holidays. However it's perfectly reasonable to assume that if one pitches up and is left standing around for hours someone should pay a sensible amount for the mild inconvenience.

It's also not unreasonable to assume that where there are a large number of 'litigants' with the exact same case that there would be some efficient (both in therms of time and expense) way to simply deal with them all en masse.

Now neither option exists, fair enough but it's hardly making a mockery of the justice system. What's making a mockery is a company that's able to charge for something, refuse service and then essentially tell the aggrieved parties to feck off, or spend more than the refund in getting it looked at using the small claim procedure. Now to be fair I haven't been following this and if the company concerned are giving refunds, fair enough, but we should have some mechanism, such as a 'trading standards' type of organisation that can issue a binding solution in these sorts of situations.

ienduredQcon

they have been giving people who didn't get in half refunds and some people have got full ones, depending on purchasing type. but they changed their terms and conditions after Saturday to say that tickets don't garauntee admittance, and anyone who was admitted to internal cues is not getting any kind of refund so far, unless they are getting them as charge backs as was suggested, or from paypal. it seems to depend on how you paid for your ticket as the front line go to is the person who sold you the ticket, just like in a shop you bring the item first back to the shop. but the ticket seller is just responsible for tickets so they claim no liability. and then the terms and conditions as changed claim no liability to people who didn't get in, and then they are a limited liability company anyway so someone here said they can just walk away from it all. he has had one company of his close down, I haven't paid the fee to see what the circumstances of that are. to be honest, most people ive talked to seem to think singular small claims is the only course to take. that we don't have a mechanism to do something en masse is unfortunate to say the least. I did make a complaint to the advertising standards people because the way they sold it really was nothing like what was on offer so they might do something. but I was the only person who rang them up so far. I don't think people enjoy banging their heads against beaurocracy after all the crap they've been through they probably just want to forget it and never have to hear the words gamercon again. so understandable. I'm pretty much leaving it at that. if I don't get a refund then ill submit a small claim but beyond that. unless others were willing to do it as a group or some body was going to look into it. I will look up if theres something in trading standards I can submit a complaint to. I just think its worth going after people to see it not happen to anyone else. if we are easy targets because of our lack of laws then we have to at least try to improve our laws.

ienduredQcon

the judicial system is there for this reason. it is not set in stone but rather, it changes as times change. if you do not use the law, the law doesn't change. it is by using the law that it becomes informed and changes in response to new circumstances. if it was a few people experiencing a few cues id be right there with you. and I do think its a waste of the courts time to take individual cases when there are thousands of cases. or would be. but this was not a few cues. this was going to the zoo and there being one monkey for thousands of families to see. if you went to the zoo and spent five hours cuing to see one shabby old monkey on a chain I'm sure you would be pissed as well. now the zoo is there all the time, it is established, it has a history, it has built itself up, over the years, if there was a difficulty its business would be at risk and it would probably give recompense to save its reputation. whereas this guy, set up his company 8 months ago, has no history, has used a name with a history, which at a glance people would assume was gamercon, just like if I said I was holding a Dublin zo0 convention you would expect it to have something to do with Dublin zoo, but no, I have just changed one letter so I have tricked you into thinking that but in fact I have a pair of dogs in my back yard for you to pay 80 quid to view with your family. and as it stands if I have enough marketing amd advertising power and enough confidence and audacity to call myself the leader in the field, because I lived near the zoo and have been there. so ill just set up ane vent and you can all pay me to come que for five hours to look at my dog? is that ok with you? why shouldn't we all just do that? all you need to do is do it once. its a once off event. not like the zoo which has to keep its reputation an expo or con can just set up like the gypsies used to set up the fairs charge you in to see the elephant and then it be a stuffed elephant....roll up roll up .... come and see it here.. one would think in our modern age we would have moved on slightly from letting gypsies rip us off with false advertising. but if you let the gypsies do one big **** off fair advertised as the greatest fiar of all time, and they rip you off for millions,w hat do they do? them and their horses are gone overnight. and this is the same thing. bigger dirtier gypsies. but the same thing. and if we haven't got a way to put a stop to them then they will just keep doing it. and yes it was our own stupid fault. we were idiots not to check that it was the real gamercon, not some irish company with the same name, and we were idiots to buy tickets with no certain schedule or admittance garauntee. and a lesson well learned and worth the money. but I still think that the public should interact with the law in a lot more matters and not fear to be taking up a judges time. that's what they are getting paid for.

njs030

I'm finding it very hard to read your posts, maybe you could use paragraphs please?
They seem to have turned into rants rather than anything constructive at this point. I'm not sure what the zoo has to do with anything.

You can claim back the cost of your ticket and that's about it, maybe travel costs at a push.
From what I've read it was badly organised and oversold and when it came to it health and safety took priority as it should do.

You should get your €25 refunded and I hope that happens.

L1011

ienduredQcon wrote: »

...

Please use paragraphs if posting again

Your knowledge of rights in this scenario is quite poor and most of your commentary is not even tangentially on topic.

slave1

I'm sure under all this is a huge disappointment of what was a wasted day, don't compound this waste of a day with stretching this bad experience out, get your ticket refund and move on, life is too short IMHO

dudara

ienduredQcon - I apologise in advance but I have to request that you attempt to format your posts more neatly by using paragraphs, capital letters etc. At the moment, your posts are appearing as big walls of text, which is hard to read and comprehend, especially for those posters on mobile devices.

dudara

Mervyn Skidmore

bill66 wrote: »

I have used the SCC on a number of occasions, you get the fee back if you win. I don't think they will entertain consequential losses for something like this, but you should check with the court to be certain.
If you paid for your ticket by credit card, ring the card issuer and ask for a chargeback, you did not get what you paid for.

You cannot claim the small claim fee back, Order 53A of the District Court Rules states that each party covers their own legal costs.

bill66

Mervyn Skidmore wrote: »

You cannot claim the small claim fee back, Order 53A of the District Court Rules states that each party covers their own legal costs.

The fee is not "legal costs" this refers to any cost you may incur using a solicitor to put your case. As I said, I have actually been through the process on a number of occassions, you get the fee back. In addition to getting this fee back you will also get the fee for the sheriff back if he is needed to collect your judgement.

Mervyn Skidmore

bill66 wrote: »

The fee is not "legal costs" this refers to any cost you may incur using a solicitor to put your case. As I said, I have actually been through the process on a number of occassions, you get the fee back. In addition to getting this fee back you will also get the fee for the sheriff back if he is needed to collect your judgement.

The fee is legal costs and you do not get legal costs under the rules. If you got the fee back from the respondent, consider yourself lucky. The fee is for the Courts Service to administer the procedure for you. You do get the sherriff's fees back if they enforce the order. If they can't enforce the order then you won't get the Sheriff's fee back.