Arc Legal Group - Colchester

Helena

If I could give 0 stars I would. My landlords insurance was moved to these guys from Saga last year. Saga was brilliant, these cowboys are useless. I buy Landlords home emergency insurance that is provided by Arc. My tenants reported a leak coming from their flat to the downstairs neighbour. I called the home emergency line yesterday morning (Sunday) and was told a plumber would come out urgently. He didn't come out until 8:20pm and all he did was take photos. He said the immersion needs replacing and he can't get hold of the part on a Sunday evening so someone will be back Monday morning. Monday has now come and gone and I've got nowhere. No plumber has returned and I have had to chase updates. All the while there is no water going into this property - this means washing, dirty dishes etc are piling up. The tenants can't shower, flush the toilet or even get a glass of water from the tap. They have had no water running in the property for over 24 hours now - and these cowboys keep saying there is nothing they can do to help! What am I paying them for?! When I had a plumbing issue last year Saga sent out an emergency plumber who was able to assess the problem, pop to a local hardware store to buy the part and pop back to fix the problem. All of this was done on the same day and in the space of around 4 hours. These guys have known what the issue is for over 24 hours now and are apparently waiting for the plumber who came out yesterday to send them his quote to fix the issue. Apparently they cannot do anything until they've received this quote - they can't even order the part! Are the tenants really supposed to go a full week with no running water in the property? Is this really how you treat a 'home emergency'?! This company is utterly useless. Please avoid them like the plague.

Sachin K.

Absolutely useless; do not bother.

No adherence to committed service standards and timelines. Do NOT engage.

Insurance company said ok to claim on legal cover but these folks declined full 3 weeks after getting all documents. They have a completely different interpretation of the eligibility criteria. I guess just trying to figure out how to say NO.

Their stated SLA was 5 days turn around time with full assessment of case merits.

ChatGPT solved my problem in the meanwhile already.

Waste of time.

Marc O.

They subcontract home emergency policies to other companies, however do not provide them with policy details. Funnily enough the subcontractors won't do any work without the policy info and only offer help if you are prepared to pay.

George G.

rubbish. got some advice from them about debt collection, and the legal advisor on the phone interrupted me and started arguing me saying that I was in the wrong before even hearing any of the details. Fast-forward, I get in contact with the debt collectors, and they waive the entire charge! How ironic is that, that I get better correspondence by the people trying to prosecute me, rather than the people here, supposedly trying to help! I would suggest to this company, to seek to help your clients rather than seeking to dismiss them.

jon H.

I would strongly advise anyone taking out legal cover as part of an insurance policy to check whom provides this. If arc legal are listed go with another provider.

Arc legal are nothing more than scam artists. They are deceitful and break the law. It is going to take a complaint to the FCA and a law suit to get them to meet their contractural obligations. Both of which I will be doing very shortly.

You best be prepared arc.

G F.

I was sent to ARC by LV insurance.

ARC's policy is to Delay/ Deny/ Defend. I had a simple eviction case, requiring a court order but ARC chose to delay. ARC continually demanded documents irrelevant to the case. ARC say they can take a week to respond to each item/ email/ call received. ARC delayed the response to each email sent so weeks went by without any progress being made.

ARC then demanded that my solicitor prepare a case study for ARC which I had to pay for. My solicitor did so, and I sent it to ARC. ARC ignored it. I followed up and after another weeks delay, ARC demanded my solicitor send it to ARC directly. I had previously asked ARC to liaise with the solicitor directly but ARC had refused. Now, after a delay, they want to correspond with the solicitor directly. All just delaying tactics by ARC and obnoxious behaviour by their claims handler.

It continued like this for weeks until ARC ran out of things to delay on. ARC then went into the Deny phase and refused to cover all the costs. After 4.5 weeks ARC reluctantly agreed to pay 53% of the initial costs. ARC still didn't pay, but said they would, however, their word is worth nothing.

If you need legal assistance, ARC are a liability and of no use. ARC never had any intention of honouring their obligations. That was clear from the first contact with ARC.

ARC is nothing more than a scam.

Sean L.

Not very helpful. And when they are pulled up for bad unprofessional service, it is only then they make abold statement that they are not trained solicitors. Well maybe they should put big headings stating that before they look at your claim, and also change the name, because having Legal in the title is misleading and deceitful

TheMardyWench

I have loads of expensive home insurance plus all the add-ons, and I've never made a claim. I've always just got things sorted myself rather than going through insurance. But when my boiler packed in on a freezing december night i remembered that I have home emergency cover through Geo and decided that I might as well use it. I rang up Arc Legal, gave them my Geo policy number; answered all the questions to the best of my knowledge; and described the situation accurately. I was then told that what I was saying didn't make sense, and then they told me that they "couldn't find my policy". I was given the option of finding my own emergency boiler engineer and paying them and then trying to claim it back; or I could wait till morning and when the office opened Arc would check that i was insured. I chose the 2nd option, but when i rang my broker in the morning, arc had not yet contacted them for confirmation that i had a policy. Arc did finally get back to me later in the afternoon to tell me that they'd found my policy (Why did it take so long? Was it written on a scrap of paper that had fallen down the back of a filing cabinet? Surely they type your name, address and policy number into the computer and up it comes?). But anyway, I'd got the problem sorted myself by that point. The whole point of emergency cover is to get a fast response, not to spend 18 hours waiting for someone to find your policy. I suppose that from an insurance company perspective, the 'Delay' makes sense......