3 days ago
TONY HETHERINGTON: Help! Storage firm lost entire contents of our five-bed home
Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday's ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.
Mrs J.P. writes: We put the contents of our five-bedroom home into long-term storage, costing £200 per month.
We had retired to Spain, but returned to the UK and contacted the storage firm to have our goods delivered to our new home.
It then informed us that it had accidentally disposed of them.
Tony Hetherington replies: It has taken months of enquiries to unravel everything that took place. You first put your belongings into storage in 2017, but in 2018 your mother-in-law was nearing the end of her life so you returned to the UK and your belongings were returned to you. In 2019 you and your husband put everything into storage again and went back to Spain.
Last year you decided to return to this country, but were then told your belongings had gone.
The name of the storage company you gave me was Herts And Essex Removals Limited, which you told me was run by Martin Sontag. But this was impossible. That company did not exist until 2021, and it was compulsorily dissolved by Companies House in March last year so it cannot have been trading when you came home several months later.
I asked you to search out your agreement and you came up with a slightly different company name, Herts & Essex Removals & Storage Ltd, based at Matching Green in Essex. The agreement pledged: 'Your furniture and effects are covered to a substantial £100,000.'
I checked, and this company was formed in 2011. But no one named Sontag was involved, and it was voluntarily dissolved in 2013.
Judging by the dates, you should have been dealing with another of this crop of similarly named companies, Herts and Essex Removal and Storage Ltd – not 'Removals', with an 's'. This was set up in 2012 and, yes, it was run by Martin Sontag.
The snag was, it went bust in 2018. Martin Sontag borrowed over £30,000 before the business collapsed, and is repaying this gradually. So you may have put your belongings into storage with this company in 2017, and got them back in 2018, but when everything went into storage again in 2019 it cannot have been with this company because it was in liquidation.
So just who were you paying? No surprise, you were paying Martin Sontag himself.
Your husband told me: 'We always paid him cash as this was his preferred method of payment.' The money was handed over by a family member and you repaid them.
When the bad news came about the loss of your possessions, Martin Sontag explained that he told his employees to prepare your belongings to be returned, and on the same day other items that were not yours were to be dumped. The instructions were accidentally reversed.
He stressed he had a 'gold plated insurance policy', but his inventory of your possessions was on a corrupted computer drive. You put together your own list, and insurance giant Sedgwick, the company handling the claim on behalf of Axa, offered you £4,700. You asked me, how could you replace the contents of an entire house for £4,700!
Armed with your signed authority, I asked Sedgwick for a copy of the policy. It refused, but did tell me that the insurance did not provide 'new for old' replacement cover.
And Sedgwick then slashed its offer to just £2,800.
But who would pay £200 a month to store goods worth only £2,800?
Martin Sontag was more helpful, and gave me a copy of the policy. It was made out to him personally. He also produced his agreement with you, in the name of one of the companies that had ceased to exist.
He told me he had bought its customer base. Without realising it, you had been switched from a contract with a company to a cash-in-hand deal with an individual.
On the brighter side, Martin Sontag told me the damaged computer had been repaired, but the inventory did not match your own. He said your inventory showed items not on his, and you told me that he had failed to list some items.
I explained to Sedgwick that there was no way I could encourage you to accept £2,800. It had to think again, and it did. When you received the new offer, it had rocketed to just under £15,000. Absurdly, it was accompanied by an alleged copy of your storage deal – in the name of the company that folded in 2013.
I invited Sedgwick's legal team to explain this. The question was clearly too difficult as they failed to answer.
I have discussed the offer with you, so I can now report that you have accepted it. Isn't it amazing that an insurance payout can shoot up by 400 per cent!
And, of course, the payment you have accepted lets Sedgwick and Axa off the hook, but Martin Sontag could still be impaled if you feel it falls short.
Handing over your worldly goods to a storage firm should not involve sleepless nights, loss of belongings or a lengthy battle for fair payment, yet that is what you faced and you deserve a fair outcome.
